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Cancer group praises ‘caring’ Donegal nurses 10.04.07

Cooperating for Cancer Care North West (CCCNW) has joined patients groups and doctors to voice support for nurses maintaining clinical services amid industrial action.
CCCNW member, Noelle Duddy, outlines the groups demands to Taoiseach Bertie Ahern during his recent visit to Inishowen. Culdaff-based Noelle Duddy of CCCNW said: “I personally needed to contact Letterkenny General Hospital last week regarding my cancer concerns and my need was responded to immediately, by very kind, caring, professional nursing staff.
“Nurses will continue to do what they are best at doing - caring for patients. If hospitals are brought to a standstill
because nurses are doing their job, which is to nurse patients, then the Health Service Executive is very, very seriously ill.”
Meanwhile, Janette Byrne of Patients Together added: “The health system is in a terrible state. But patients are not suffering more because of the nurse’s work-to-rule.
“They are waiting just as long and finding services as hard to access as they always do – a situation that’s completely unacceptable.
“It’s very sad to hear HSE officials blaming nurses for a problem that never went away. Patients were suffering long before the nurses took any type of industrial action.”
The Doctors’ Alliance for Better Public Healthcare said nurses were carrying out their clinical duties as normal.
Professor John Nolan said: “In my hospital, and we’re no exception, nurses are at work and carrying out their clinical duties. If anything, without the extra burden of admin and telephone answering, nurses have more time to devote to the clinical care of their patients,” he said.
“It’s ridiculous to say that things are worse because of the nurses’ action – it’s a smokescreen. Contrary to what has been suggested by the Minister and others, things hadn’t improved in the first place.”
All three groups believe that the way forward for the health service is for the HSE to sit down with health professionals and patient representative groups at local, regional and national levels and work out how to do things better in our hospitals, in the community and across the service.
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