In recent months, most members of our branch have been informed that their eligibility to receive packages from the NSW Rural Health Workforce Incentive Scheme (RHWIS) has been reviewed, and that these payments will cease in 12 months’ time.

The governance and decision making around Rural Workforce Incentives was complicated from the start. Our hospital is big enough to have multiple wards and work groups, yet small enough to have recruitment and retention difficulties due to rurality. The incentive was not a consistent sum of money, but was awarded between $5000-10,000 per year, paid fortnightly, depending on assessment of recruitment difficulty, whether it was critical or hard to fill.

Initially, a few difficult-to-staff wards received good bonuses, but wards alongside did not.

Incentives were assessed in work groups, or sometimes line management groups, which saw some staff who worked together and performed many of the same roles, receive differing incentive assessments.

Staff who work across wards missed out entirely, such as our many casual staff who save our rosters week after week. This created a nursing and midwifery workforce receiving differing hourly rates due to incentive assessment, not role designation or experience grading. This has upset and undervalued many people.

In the current reassessment, permanent staff positions are assessed against a criterion of being advertised twice in the previous 6 months without recruitment. i.e. we need to resign to prove our worth! It is the opposite of a retention incentive.

Our members are disappointed and stressed by the discontinuation of an incentive which was initially proposed to respect the work we do and the commitment we have to our rural workplaces and public health.

Emma Ratajczyk, RN, Armidale Community Health & Hospital Branch