The ED experience vindicates our faith in ratios, and our Multi-Purpose Services are now crying out for them.

Thomas Hubbard, the branch secretary of the NSWNMA Quirindi and Werris Creek branch, has his own story of the dire staffing crisis that exists in some of our regional hospitals and MPSs.

“I got asked to do eight night shifts in a row once, which is unheard of, because there was no staff to cover them. And it hurt me a lot,” he said.

“I was physically worn out, drained. My mood was horrible. I probably had a little bit of depression doing all those shifts. But being the person I am, I just said yes to them because no one else was going to do it.”

At the time, Thomas was working at the Werris Creek MultiPurpose Service, located about 45 kilometres from Tamworth. The facility has four semi-acute beds and 12 residential aged care beds.

“On a shift, you had one RN and sometimes an EN and one or two AINS. But then some days, you would only have an RN and two AINS.

“It only has semi-acute beds, so it has patients coming back from Tamworth for palliative care, semi-acute issues or waiting for residential aged care facilities.

“There is a massive waitlist to get into residential aged care because there’s no aged care facilities available around the area.”

The Minns government committed to ratios in Multi-Purpose Services, but they are yet to be funded and there has been no roll-out.

Thomas says the branch is “pretty upset” that there has been no movement to implement ratios as had been promised.

“We just feel like we’re forgotten. Ratios would make a lot of difference. We’d be able to give the proper care that our patients need. We’d actually be able to have breaks because at the moment a lot of us, including me, are doing a lot of overtime.

“We’re not taking leave like we should be doing. And we’re calling in agencies, which is costing an absolute mountain of money. A lot of the older staff are burning out because of the workload and unsafe ratios.”

Thomas has since moved to nearby Quirindi Hospital to work. It too has an acute staffing problem.

“The staff here are amazing. We do the job that we have to do with the number of staff and the amount of resources that we can get. But we are also understaffed.

“We don’t have enough emergency department nurses to cover the ED full time. A lot of our nurses are doing overtime shifts, doing 12-hour shifts constantly, to cover it because we are a 24-hour hospital.

“We’re about to put a motion to ask NSW Health if we can get extra staff. It’s going to be an uphill battle. Our care for our patients never ceases but we just need extra help.”