Student nurses struggling with out of county placements

“It’s frustrating because it’s unavoidable. It is just the way the cookie crumbles; there’s a certain number of students needing placements, and there are only a certain number of placement spots in hospitals. Everyone gets something outside of Cork.”

Fionn O’Malley, a student in UCC’s Nursing (Children’s and General Integrated) course, said that he has struggled to organise his life around a hospital placement he learned about with relative short notice.

Fionn will be doing a one-month placement in Tipperary University Hospital’s (TUH) Clonmel campus in November, and he said that trying to source accommodation and organise his placement around his weekend job has been a significant challenge.

“For me it’s going to present a good bit of a challenge, unless I can sort out my roster to be three-day blocks, which is what most people go for whenever they leave Cork. It just works out way better.

“With this particular year it’s quite difficult. I’m just off placement at the end of August. I’m starting another placement the week of 5 October, and then another on 2 November, study leave for four or five days, and then exams. My only class time before those exams is in September,” he said.

Expenses for travel outside of Cork is a big part of the issue.

“Financial support from the college is very low,” he said.

Students who travel outside of the county are provided with a certain amount of reimbursement for their accommodation and travel costs. These come out to a maximum of €80 per night and €300 per week.

Fionn is not the only one of his classmates feeling the strain. One student, who asked to remain anonymous, has just returned from her latest placement. She spent August at University Hospital Limerick (UHL).

She said that she learned where she would be doing her placement just a month before when she was contacted by the placement coordinator in Limerick. She worked in the hospital for two or three days consecutively each week.

Accommodation was the most difficult thing for her to sort.

“I took the train up but stayed overnight in a hotel for most of the days. It was the only option I could find that suited me as it was the cheapest, though still very expensive.

“On the website for the placements it gives us recommendations on where to stay, but the ones I looked into were very expensive. They also provided us with contact numbers for private hosts but the one I contacted was unable to take me in.

“It was stressful as I was trying to find cheaper accommodation which was hard for Limerick,” she said.

The end result for student nurses is, as another of Fionn’s classmates put it, it being impossible to act independently. “You lose your ability to reliably plan ahead, make money, or to socialise,” she said.

For Fionn, it’s more than that.

“Nursing is already an occupation that’s seriously understaffed in Ireland, and the strain put on student nurses does nothing to encourage us to recommend the profession,” he said.