I am a paediatric nurse. During the pandemic so many nurses and midwives have quit due to the poor pay and poor working conditions that they (management) are, not asking, but telling us we are to be sent to areas we are not trained in. Areas such as the post natal ward where we are being asked to take a full maternity patient load (up to 6 patients + their babies), could have twins – dosent matter they are not counted in numbers – for a 12 hr shift without orientation to the ward. the proper training to do so .It is an additional two years training (one at uni, one as a new grad) to be a midwife once you are an RN – and as an RN, we were never aloud to work on a maternity ward with a full and often complex patient load before this pandemic, so why are we suddently aloud to now. It is illegal what they are forcing us to do, it is unsafe for the patients and unfair for the staff. all too often, short of walking out from my shift and leaving my patients with nobody to look after them, I stay and try my best… Which is not good enough.Three of my patients became unwell one night and I was left on my own to advocate for them and then action the dr’s requests without the proper training to do so. Apologising to my patients for not being able to provide the care is wish too has increasingly become a more frequent occurance

This is one of so many stories I have. So many staff have quit because of the stressful, unsafe situations other staff are left short becuase nurses from other wards are continually pulled in to fill the gaps. One one shift I was sent to the emergency department, I was there with ONE other nurse who had also never worked there before or had suffient training. We did our best between the many patient that we saw that night- again, NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

Now that unsafe staffing has gone on for years on a shift by shift basis, and the government has refused to hear our pleas for help – the government needs to pull a rabbit out of their hat quickly to fix this. I am afraid to leave my family members in the care of our hospital staff now as I see the corners we have to cut to maintain basic care without even being able to have a break or leave to home on time. I am 33 years old I am afraid I am almost at the end of my career in nursing as I cannot take these atrocious conditons for much longer and I am afraid I will need to give up years of intensive care training to maintain my own physical and mental health.

We are not hero’s so they keep saying – We are highly skilled, highly trained, I cebaibly intelligent healthcare professionals so treat us that way because you are not. Nurses are EXTREMELY resilient people – it’s got to make you worry when we are all standing here saying we can’t do it anymore!