|
||
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
||
|
|
Issue No. 140 | 14 June 2002 |
|
||
|
||
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Abbott's Rule of Law
Interview: Party Girl Unions: Touch One, Touch All Industrial: Condition Critical International: Innocence Lost History: Strange Bedfellows Organising: Just Say No Review: Choosing Life Beneath The Clouds Poetry: Did We Make a Big Mistake
The Soapbox The Dressing Room The Locker Room Week in Review Bosswatch
 Luke and LearnDue CreditTom's FooleryMore LathamMore Tom
|
|
|
Industrial Condition Critical
********** What's a nurse worth? The answer is central to the future of Australian health care and, this week, the question moved from hospital wards and city streets to the rather more rarified atmosphere of the Industrial Relations Commission. Nurses appear to have chalked up victories in the first two theatres. Thousands joined protest rallies and struck in support of their union's claim for a one-off 15 percent wage rise and a special retention allowance. Their actions won endorsement from rank and file citizens. More than 110,000 people, up and down the state, signed a petition to go before state parliament, urging wage justice. But still Bob Carr's state government says 'no' and that's why, this week, the wigs and gowns went on and the campaign moved indoors, to a fourth-floor courtroom above the harbour end of Phillip St. For reasons of legal necessity the case isn't being fought on the obvious grounds of recruitment and retention. Rather, nurses are going down a track that will require them to prove to the Commission's full bench that modern nursing skills aren't recognised by current remuneration. Essentially, they are saying, their work has become more intense, skillful and complex than traditional arrangements perceive. But it's not just nurses making the point. On its third sitting day the commission was told progressive reductions in resource allocations had left the public hospital system reeling. Professor John Dwyer, clinical project director at the Prince of Wales Hospital, warned that a nursing shortage would see "significant numbers of elderly and disadvantaged people" denied urgently-needed care this winter. He told the commission that, on average, 143 available beds went unused every day at Prince of Wales. "The reason we cannot utilise our bed capacity at the Prince of Wales Hospital is readily identified; it has proved impossible to recruit even the minimum number of nurses nceessary for us to safely service additional beds. At present, my hospital has no fewer than 130 vacancies for permanent nursing staff positions," Professor Dwyer said. So what? Well, according to the professor, the ramifications are felt all along the line. - To utilise 507 of the 650 available beds at Prince of Wales requires substantial use of casual or agency nurses, 91 on an average day. - - This casualisation "compromises" the quality of clinical activities and blows out an already-strained budget. - Fulltime nurses come under "unreasonable" pressures to keep the hospital operating. - Leave, including that required for professional study, becomes a burden on workmates Professor Dwyer says in the clincial disciplines under his direction it costs more than half as much again to employ an agency nurse as a fulltime employee. This practise, he says, is the single biggest reason for unbudgeted expenditure in his areas of expertise. Then Professor Dwyer addressed himself to the changing nature of nurses work. He argues that changing regimes mean there are no longer any "easy" patients, that those admitted are consistently more demanding in terms of their physical, medical and psychological needs, than in the past. An ageing population means increasing medical complications and multiple treatments, procedures therapies and drug regimes. Professor Dwyer's experiences mirrored, in general terms, those reported by Kath Needham, senior nurse manager at Westmead Hospital's Intensive Care Unit. Needham said Intensive Care patients were older and sicker than five years ago. This, she said, was born out by application of the internationally-accepted APACHE system, which measures acuity and dependency. "There is greater resort to more and more complex technology. The therapies are more complex and require greater monitoring. The consequential demands for nursing staff are substantial, particularly in the areas of education and training," Needham told the commission. "The expectations imposed on ursing staff suggests they must be able to perform at a very high level over longer periods. Double shifts are commonplace," he says. Other cuts, he argues, see overworked nurses, increasingly responsible for physiotherapy, speech pathology, occupational therapy and social work. On top, human resource and clerical duties are, more and more, being shifted onto registered nurses. Interestingly, the expertise of both witnesses has been recognised by state government. Dwyer co-chairs the Greater Metropolitan Transitional Taskforce set up to implement 169 recommendations for improving the quality of hospital services throughout NSW. Needham, who also serves on that body, was appointed by Health Minister Craig Knowles to co-chair the group that brought down the state's Intensive Care Services Plan - Adult Services.. Unless, we missed something, both seemed to be telling the commission that unless urgent action is taken to recognise and reward nurses, the best efforts of such bodies will be continually undermined. The case is continuing.
|
| Search All Issues | Latest Issue | Previous Issues | Print Latest Issue |
|
© 1999-2002 Workers Online 
|
|
