report in the Irish Examiner<\/a> showing money paid to agencies in this sector almost doubled from \u20ac64.5m to \u20ac118.9m last year. Despite pledges to rein this in, it reached \u20ac52.1m spent already by May.<\/p>\nCamille Loftus, head of advocacy and public affairs with Age Action, said she was disturbed but not surprised by the findings.<\/p>\n
\u201cA reliance on agency staff in healthcare services is a healthcare risk,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\n If you look at instances where there have been errors, failure in care, medical misadventure, you will find very frequently that the use of agency staff was a factor.\u00a0\n <\/p>\n
She stressed this was not because temporary workers might not be qualified, but \u201cit does mean they are not familiar with the healthcare setting in which they\u2019re working\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She suggested if a nursing home or homecare service was short-staffed enough to need agency help, they were unlikely to have time to offer thorough training on the day.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you can see a pattern where a sector in the health service is heavily staffed by people who are not full-time employed, that is an indication of a problem and it is absolutely a risk,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Low salaries are common in social care for older people, especially in nursing homes, she added.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe saw the kind of failures that can occur when a provider is consistently understaffed in that RT\u00c9 Investigates programme on nursing homes,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt least part of that problem was persistent understaffing. You will remember that horrific scene of that woman standing there with a man desperate to use the bathroom, and she knowing she couldn\u2019t leave over 20 people unattended \u2014 that\u2019s an understaffing problem.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Undercover footage shot at two homes run by Emeis Ireland was shared by RT\u00c9 in June to widespread outrage.<\/p>\n
In general, Ms Loftus said: \u201cWhen you’re dealing with residents where dementia might be an issue, a constant turnover of staff where people don\u2019t know residents\u2019 preferences is worrying.<\/p>\n
\n It\u2019s risky, it makes it more likely something will go wrong for the patient.\n <\/p>\n
The pressures are only likely to continue, with the projected rise in people living longer. She raised concerns about how this is being managed by the HSE and Government.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe agency staffing numbers are like a canary in the coalmine, it\u2019s a warning to us that in this system \u2014 which we all think is creaking at the seams \u2014 that those fissures are becoming critical now,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The HSE said agency staff were used to cover holidays, sick leave or maternity leave, as well as when short-staffed. It acknowledged recruitment as a challenge, saying this was the case for health services worldwide now.<\/p>\n
The data was released by the HSE to Sinn F\u00e9in health spokesman David Cullinane.<\/p>\n
He criticised the HSE\u2019s staff policy \u2014 pay and numbers strategy \u2014 as ineffective, calling for \u201can ambitious and realistic workforce plan\u201d. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A doubling of agency staff use for older people\u2019s services by the HSE is a healthcare risk and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":888,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[275],"tags":[1201,18,135,475,474,19,17,5,1202],"class_list":{"0":"post-887","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-court-and-crime","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-health-care","12":"tag-healthcare","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-politics-and-analysis"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/887\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}