HSE faces challenge in securing staff for new mental hospital, nurses warn

The HSE faces a major challenge in finding sufficient staff to operate the new €140-million national forensic mental health service at Portrane in north Dublin when it opens next year, psychiatric nurses have warned.

The general secretary of the Psychiatric Nurses Association(PNA) Peter Hughes told its annual conference in Wexford on Thursday the transfer of services to the new facility - which is to replace the existing Central Mental Hospital in Dundrum - represented the largest such undertaking for mental health services in the history of the State.

He said staffing of the new National Forensic Mental Health Services would be a major challenge in the context of an existing recruitment crisis.

MrHughes saidthe new Portrane facility would provide an additional 74 beds and require approximately 200 additional nurses.

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He said “major initiatives” would be needed to attract staff to work in this new facility.

MrHughes told the conference the shortage of nurses in mental health services was growing while demand across all areas continued to increase.

He said the recruitment and retention crisis showed no signs of easing with emigration of psychiatric nursing graduates due to the attraction of better pay and conditions in the private sector and a prospect of 34 per cent of psychiatric nurses retiring by 2021 all adding to the crisis.

“Even now the HSE solution to the crisis has been to impose an embargo on all recruitment from April. This move is only adding to the staffing crisis and I am calling on the HSE to immediately introduce derogation from this embargo for mental health and intellectual disability services.”

Mr Hughes said the “near collapse” of mental health services in some parts of the country during the recent PNA ban on overtime highlighted the reliance of the services on overtime and agency staff, and the lack of staff throughout the system.

“This situation must end and highlights the urgency in concluding the negotiations on the settlement of the recent nurses’ dispute. The lethargy shown in bringing these negotiations to a conclusion is itself an indication of the Government’s lack of urgency in solving the staffing crisis in nursing and moving on to invest and develop services to meet the growing demand for mental health services.”

Mr Hughes said despite repeated assurances from the HSE and Government, the inadequacies and underinvestment in the child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) were continuing “with severe consequences for staff, service users and families up and down the country”.

“ There is now a shortfall of 12 day hospitals with the closure of Linn Dara day hospital.”

The conference also heard that:

* Only 66 of the recommended 100 beds in Vision for Change(reform plan) were operational.

* Multidisciplinary teams remained inadequately resourced.

* Waiting lists for first time assessments were over 2,500

* There were 81 admissions of children to adult psychiatric units in 2018.

Mr Hughes also dismissed proposals put forward by Minster of State with responsibility for Mental Health Jim Daly for the introduction of tele-assessments where children would be assessed online by a psychiatrist.

“People with mental health problems need assessment on a direct one- to- one interpersonal basis. I call on the Minister to abandon this inappropriate solution to a staffing crisis and introduce meaningful measures to attract staff to the services.”