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STUDENT NURSES have made headlines recently after the government voted against a motion to pay for clinical placement during the pandemic.
The motion was rejected by all three governing parties, which was described as “ruthless” and a “treason that will not be forgotten” by TD Richard Boyd Barrett of People Before Profit.
The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organization (INMO) is currently in discussions with the government regarding the pay of female nursing students.
Speaking at the Dáil yesterday afternoon, the Taoiseach Micheál Martin said that there should be “no exploitation of any nursing student in any hospital setting.”
Let’s take a look at the details of nursing student payments and what exactly nursing students do during their clinical placement during their degree.
Are nursing students ever paid?
During their time in college, nursing students must work without pay to earn the necessary amount of ‘work hours’ necessary to be fully qualified.
From the fourth year on, these nurses receive some payment, but a large portion of their clinical placements are not paid for the remainder of their career.
Clinical placement takes place in healthcare or related settings, such as hospitals.
Placements typically last 12 weeks in the first three years and take place at different times of the year, depending on the university and setting.
INMO said in March that female nursing students and midwives who complete unpaid work placements during the pandemic should be paid and protected as employees.
On March 26, then-Health Minister Simon Harris confirmed that nursing students and midwives were completing internships during the pandemic. would be paid.
Harris said all student nurses and midwives would be offered contracts as health care assistants (HCAs) and paid accordingly.
This scheme is no longer in operation. It ceased in August, leading to the opposition motion that was rejected by Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and the Green Party.
This is what happened to various groups over the past nine months:
First, second and third year
Placements during these years at the university are generally unpaid. However, this changed during the pandemic.
Following union negotiations, these years’ clinical internship students were offered temporary contracts and paid an HCA salary between April and August.
Anyone who completed a placement during this time on these contracts was paid on the scale starting at € 13.82 per hour.
These temporary HCA contracts for freshmen, sophomores, and juniors were extended until August 31. This measure ended at that time and has not been reinstated since then, so people placed since then have not received remuneration.
Fourth year
In the fourth and final year of their career, nursing students complete a 36-week continuous placement list and are paid as health service employees.
This internship has traditionally been paid for, but the payment was reduced during the recession.
Again, the pandemic changed the situation with this payment. The government said that fourth-year students in their continuous placement should also receive a payment on the HCA scale.
This was originally intended to be for a three-month period from April to July, but was then extended until the end of the students’ internship.
As of October 1 of this year, the salary of a 36-week nursing student intern stood at € 15,056, according to INMO. This costs almost € 11 an hour.
Assignments
Nursing or midwifery students from the first to third year are entitled to an accommodation allowance of up to € 50.79 per week during their stay.
This is only paid in the case where it is necessary for the student to live far from their usual place of residence during the placement.
The allocation for nursing students is being reviewed and a report will be available in September 2021, said Tánaiste Leo Varadkar.
What happened last week?
Last week, the government voted against a motion to pay nursing students.
The Solidarity-People Before Profit (PBP) motion presented by TD Mick Barry was defeated by 77 votes to 72.
Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party voted against the motion, while opposition parties and groups supported it.
The motion called for the immediate reinstatement of payment at the HCA rate for nursing students and midwives who were or are in place during the Covid-19 pandemic, among other measures.
These include:
- Establish a scholarship or payment system to cover travel and accommodation expenses for the duration of the internship.
- Abolish university education fees of more than € 3,000 per year for students “who are trained to work on the front line of the health service”
- Ensure pay parity for nurses and midwives with all other paramedic graduates
A similar motion was rejected in a vote earlier this year.
The Taoiseach yesterday described this motion as “simplistic” and designed to be posted on social media.
“I understand what you were in last week, in terms of filing a motion, setting up the board, going on social media and saying ‘they don’t want to pay, we want to pay’, that’s too simplistic and you know it,” he said Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald at the Dáil.
The government presented a counter-motion describing the current provisions regarding the weekly allocation of accommodation of 50.79 euros for some in employment, among other measures.
Green Party TD Marc Casey said on Twitter: “Everybody wants to do everything possible on behalf of the nursing students, including myself, but this motion was not the way to do it.”
What is the job of a nursing student?
Nursing students complete their placements in a variety of different clinical settings.
A sophomore nursing student Chloe Slevin wrote an article for TheJournal.ie last weekend saying:
We are not just students, we are fully integrated into our locations, and despite being a student, every patient I have met has called me a “nurse”. I’m sure you can imagine how weird it was to hear that at 18, and it still feels weird to me now. For my patients, I am more than a student.
Last month Richard Boyd Barrett spoke at the Dáil about nursing students who had reached out to him.
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“A second year nurse worked six weeks on the placement. I worked four days a week at Rotunda Hospital from 7.30 am to 4 pm, ”he said.
“He also had a job in retail on the weekends where he was paid absolutely nothing. He worked two weeks in a gynecology ward from 7:30 a.m. M. At 8:30 p. M. And they didn’t pay him a penny. “
It is understood that nursing students in their fourth year of 36 week placement are often included on staff rosters. This also happens occasionally in other placement years.
INMO said earlier this year: “The purpose of a placement is to train the student, not to provide additional resources to the health service.”
The union added that if the health service cannot provide adequate training during the Covid-19 crisis, “then they must change the status of trainees.”
The Taoiseach also referenced the status of students, saying that nursing education has been designed for nursing students to receive a degree.
He argued that it would be a step backwards for him to return to a learning scenario in which nurses would be working in hospitals.
“At the heart of this, it seems to me now, do we want to protect the learning experience of nurses in the degree program or not?” He said.
I introduced it myself as Minister of Health and it was important in terms of giving a higher degree of respect in terms of the nursing profession within the general hierarchy of health.
“A nurse educator, director of a particular university, told me that this is fundamental from our perspective. Everything we have fought for for the last 20 years is now at risk if we think again that it is okay for nursing students to do all kinds of work in the hospital when they are supposed to learn, “he added.
What has INMO said recently?
INMO is in talks with the government on the issue of nursing students who are not paid during their placement.
In a statement this week, the union said: “INMO and our student members are involved in an intensive debate with the government on the problems of student nurses and midwives. We will issue an additional statement in the next few days once the next steps have been agreed with our members. ”
– With a report by Rónán Duffy
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