Nurses reissue call for safe staffing levels one year after strike

More needs to be done to tackle safe staffing levels in Northern Ireland's health service, according to the Royal College of Nursing (RCN).

A year on from the nurses' strike, the union has warned that problems caused by poor workforce planning and chronic underfunding have not been addressed.

Instead they have been exacerbated by the CoOVID-19 pandemic, said the RCN.

The Department of Health said dealing with staff shortfalls was a "key priority" for the health minister.

Pat Cullen, the Northern Ireland director of the RCN, said "very little has actually changed" since about 15,000 healthcare workers took to the picket line in December last year for a series of protests over pay and safe staffing levels.

"We need to remind the government that many of these issues have sadly not gone away," she added.

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Source: BBC News, 18 December 2020