NURSING would never be the same, Mr Des Kavanagh, secretary of the Psychiatric Nurses' Association of Ireland, told the association's annual delegate conference yesterday.
The conference also heard a call for the Minister for Health, Mr Noonan, to establish a committee to oversee standards of supervision in community care for psychiatric patients.
Mr Kavanagh said nurses had now discovered real power. "Nurses, a predominantly female profession, have given expression in a professional and assertive way to the new confidence of modern Irish women; nurses have determined to no longer await the good grace of government as benefactor but to seize what is rightfully ours," said Mr Kavanagh.
He said nurses had made "giant strides" in the past year. However, he sounded a warning to those who thought that everything has been sorted out.
"We do not yet appreciate the full merit of our achievements but we must issue a cautionary note: to those who think the nursing pay issue is resolved; to those who believe we should now go back to working with our heads bowed below the parapet; to those who think they need not revisit our claims for 10 to 15 years - be warned. We know our value. More, importantly we know our power, said Mr Kavanagh.
The PNA, he said, gave power to the Nursing Alliance in the recent fight for better pay and conditions.
"The PNA was the cement which held it together at a time of great pressure. The PNA was the pressure which pushed the staff nurse salary to above £20,000."
Mr Kavanagh said the Department of Health and health boards urgently needed to adopt a "determined" policy to increase the number of student nurses.
"The predicted increase in retirements after the application of the remaining part of the pay deal will greatly exacerbate the problem," he said.
The announcement by Mr Noonan this week of an additional 106 training places did not go far enough, he said.
Mr Kavanagh said psychiatric nurses had recently encountered a small number of difficulties, particularly in the area of rehabilitation, with hospital consultants who insisted on implementing their decisions where there was disagreement with nurses.
When consultants insisted on trying to steam roll through their own policies in spite of the nursing view, the PNA would "be firmly on the side of the nurses, on the side of safety and on the side of good practice", Mr Kavanagh said.
The call for a committee to oversee standards of community care in the supervision of psychiatric patients follows the killing of two women in a hostel attached to St Brendan's Hospital in Dublin last March.
A recommendation from the PNA chairman, Mr Seamus Murphy, calling on the Minister for Health to establish the review group, comprising representatives of the health boards, trade unions and voluntary groups, was accepted.
Mr Kavanagh said an independent staffing review group, which had been established following a recommendation from the Labour Relations Commission, had recommended an increase in nighttime staffing at Orchard View Hostel where the women who were murdered had been living.
He said the PNA had repeatedly raised the issue in recent years but had met with resistance from the Eastern Health Board.
"We believe that had the staffing levels been present the potential for the type of incident that occurred would have been significantly reduced. Criteria need to be set about when a psychiatric patient can be left unsupervised," said Mr Kavanagh.
A conference delegate, Mr John Fitzpatrick, said longstay psychiatric patients who were discharged into the community should have some sort of supervision.
He said these patients are discharged on medical evidence but "we believe that the nurses are the experts because we are continually caring for them and we have a valuable role to play in arriving at decisions regarding patients being discharged".
Another delegate, Mr Michael Roban, claimed there was an "obsession" by the EHB for the quick closure and discharge of patients from St Brendan's Hospital.
"The health board have not considered in any way the views of nurses in this matter. We want certain standards of accommodation looked into."
There is a need for increased supervision. We have a problem in Dublin, within a half mile of St Brendan's Hospital, where there are nearly 13 hostels with psychiatric patients," said Mr Roban.