- Conference
- 2015 Health Care Service Group Conference
- Date
- 5 December 2014
- Decision
- Carried as Amended
Conference notes the increase in recent years in the demand for nursing staff to work 12 hours, and other long shift patterns. While recognising that they are popular with some members we are aware that in some clinical areas there are significant concerns. The risk of fatigue leading to drug errors and their long term impact on members health are just two examples.
They appear to have been introduced in some areas with little regard for the difficulty of obtaining childcare outside 8am-6pm (let alone that parents might actually want to see their younger children at some point in the day). Additionally the fact that we have an ageing nursing workforce, sometimes with long term health conditions that make 12 hour shifts particularly challenging, has also been glossed over.
Despite these concerns there seems to be a dearth of evidence to demonstrate the impact of these changes on our member’s health and wellbeing, or work life balance. Equally the impact on the quality of care and service delivery has also been little studied.
Conference therefore calls upon the Health Service Group Executive to:
1) commission a study to assess the impact of long shifts, identifying both any benefits to them and their negative effects, looking at the health and wellbeing of staff, work life balance, safety and quality of service delivery, cost of service delivery;
2) to report the findings back to Health Conference 2016.