Up to one-third of medical staff may be absent at any given time at the National Rehabilitation Hospital (NRH) due to the cumulative impact of study leave and annual leave, heard a meeting of the NRH’s board.
A business case for extra NCHDs was being prepared to “address this issue and mitigate the associated operational risk”, according to minutes of the meeting in October 2025. The meeting minutes were released by the NRH under Freedom of Information law.
A spokesperson for the NRH told the Medical Independent it was awaiting a decision on the business case, which was submitted at the beginning of April.
The spokesperson added: “The NRH prioritises urgent around-the-clock patient care which, if numbers were low, would involve temporary redeployment of an NCHD from activities such as interdisciplinary team meetings and goal planning meetings.”
The NRH was “fully compliant” with the average 48-hour working week and the 2022 IMO/health management NCHD agreement, said the spokesperson. The hospital has an electronic attendance system in place to record working hours “accurately”.
Its spokesperson said one whole-time equivalent additional NCHD was granted “on a cost-neutral basis” on foot of the 2022 NCHD agreement. The NRH is a publicly funded 120-bed inpatient, day-patient and outpatient rehabilitation hospital in south Dublin. It provides complex specialist rehabilitation services to patients who, due to an accident, illness or injury, have acquired a physical or cognitive disability and require a specialist programme of rehabilitation. This includes specialist rehabilitation programmes for brain injury, spinal cord injury, and stroke.
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