STUDENT NURSES HAVE described the financial pressure of having to take out loans, rely on hardship funds and, in some cases, sleep in cars or stay in B&Bs to be able to complete the unpaid placements required to qualify.

Christopher O’Dwyer (33) is currently in his fourth year and completing an internship at the Mater hospital in Dublin, while Rebecca Brennan (28) is completing an internship in Drogheda as part of her final year, and she commutes there from Cavan daily.

Both students have considered walking away from their studies at different points due to the financial burden that working unpaid placements in years 1-3 placed them under. 

They are now paid 80% of a graduate wage while completing their fourth year placements, but they do not receive mileage compensation to cover travel costs. 

Brennan said that waiting on reimbursement for placement travel costs left her in a position where she had to access a student hardship fund last year. 

She was doing agency work to be able to pay her rent and bills while studying, having taken out a loan to go back and do nursing as a mature student. 

“It came to a Friday morning in college when I opened my bank, and I expected to have been paid, but there was some issue and I hadn’t been.

“The diesel light was on in the car. I’d no money for food and my rent due the next Friday, I was waiting on a back payment for my travelling costs for my previous placement… and I remember thinking, ‘I might just pack it all in’,” Brennan said. 

Brennan said that through financial support from her college, the Dundalk Institute of Technology, she was able to carry on with her studies. 

However, the financial burden of travelling long distances for work without the reimbursement that the HSE offers permanent staff continues to be a real financial burden for her. 

“I spend maybe over €100 a week in diesel… in the last month alone I’ve done three and a half thousand kilometres of driving. 

“We make 80% of what a new graduate makes, it’s great that we have that but it doesn’t go far enough,” Brennan said. 

Nursing students in Ireland have to complete 81 weeks of clinical placement over the course of four years, and they are only in receipt of a salary for the 36 weeks that they complete in their last year via internships.

There are payments available for lunches and travel costs, but O’Dwyer and Brennan said that the payments of these can be “months” overdue, which has a knock-on effect. 

O’Dwyer said that working on unpaid placements for weeks placed him under extreme financial stress. 

While working 37.5 hours a week on an unpaid placement, he was going straight from his shifts in the hospital to extended night shifts in homelessness services in Dublin to make ends meet. 

“It had a huge impact on my health. I developed severe thyroid issues that I’m being treated for now, and my story isn’t unique. There are so many students around this country that are literally putting their bodies on the line to do it,” O’Dwyer said. 

O’Dwyer said that he’s aware of student nurses who have had to sleep in their cars and in hostels during placements in different hospitals in cities because they could not find affordable accommodation.

He added that this means new nursing and midwifery graduates are coming to the job “burned out” before they have even started. 

“We’re basically doing the twelve-and-a-half-hour shift for no pay, in the middle of everything that’s happening during the cost-of-living and fuel crisis.

“If we don’t meet those hours, we can’t qualify. We don’t get our registration number, and we don’t get to walk across that stage on graduation day,” he said. 

O’Dwyer is still deciding which area of nursing to go into upon graduation and has an interest in moving into midwifery. Brennan wants to work in critical care. 

Both nurses say that the government now needs to move to increase financial supports for students in nursing and midwifery, even if it’s on an incremental basis, or people will be priced out of pursuing the career in the years to come. 

Both soon-to-be nurses were speaking at the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation’s annual conference, where the leadership has called on the government to bring in a cost-of-living package for frontline workers.