FOREIGN NURSES at a well-known private hospital in Dublin have been reminded to speak in English while doing their rounds.
Metro Éireann understands that management at the Bon Secours Hospital in Glasnevin on Dublin’s northside issued the directive to ward nurses after some foreign-born staff were conversing in their native tongue while on duty.
Bon Secours manager Gareth Jones neither confirmed nor denied the incident, but commented: “In an Irish healthcare setting English is naturally the language used in the working environment. This is to ensure effective communication on important healthcare issues. It is also a matter of courtesy to others, including patients.”
He continued: “I routinely hear staff speaking in their native language in social situations but staff mostly refrain from doing so in the company of other nationalities as a matter of courtesy. I think this is appropriate.”
Like most Dublin hospitals, the Bon Secours has a significant contingent of overseas nursing staff, principally from the Philippines and India. Across the Irish health service, approximately 14 per cent of nurses and midwives are originally from outside Ireland.
Sources at the Bon Secours indicated that the overall relationship between Irish and foreign-born staff is generally good.
The Irish Nurses Organisation’s industrial relations officer in Dublin, Albert Murphy, said he had not been requested to represent any nurse in relation to this issue, although had come across a similar situation at another institution.
“A patient was complaining and a foreign nurse muttered something in her own language,” he recalled, adding that management had decreed that the working language must be English at all times.
Murphy said he had also received no complaints from Irish nurses who could possibly feel isolated if surrounded by foreign-speaking colleagues during break-time.
