General
Exhaustion leads to more than one in four primary health nurses planning to quit
A recent survey released by the Australian Primary Health Care Nurses Association (APNA) has found that more than one in four nurses working in primary health are planning to quit in the next twelve months.
The looming mass exit from the primary health sector puts Australia at risk of not having enough nurses to staff t general practices, correctional facilities, schools and other primary health services, according to APNA.
The survey of 1,061 primary health nurses found that 28.73 percent of nurses in the sector were planning to quit over the coming year.
Workloads have been blamed for this result, with 80.4 percent of those surveyed indicating that they felt exhausted from work, and 78.8 percent indicating that they were experiencing burnout.
Further, 72.9 percent indicated that they felt they were “working too much”.
Karen Booth, President of APNA, has called for reform within the sector, indicating that “primary health care nurses desperately need help”.
‘While health authorities recruited extra staff and provided extra resources to help with hospital admissions, they forgot the primary healthcare sector,’ she said.
Sydney GP Dr Josie Guyer echoed Ms Booth’s sentiments.
‘The current COVID times that we’re having to live with, especially in primary care, [have increased] demands not only on us as GPs, but certainly on nurses,’
Ms Booth indicated that “innovative” approaches will be needed to address this issue, which includes increased staffing and focus on the sector, as well as the involvement of nursing students to stem the shortage.
Dale says
Hi just like to say at the moment although I have a registration I am taking a break from nursing as I was feeling burnt out and management did not want to address the issue of staff burn out. The only option I had was to suck it up or for my health leave nursing. I now work as a cleaner in an age care facility. And now being able to view nursing from a different angle, what I see everyday amongst the nurses is constant short staffing, overworked and exhausted nurses trying despite there own exhaustion trying to deliver quality care to the residents. With very little or no thanks from the people above them. I guess from a business perspective if you can get one person to do the work of two well it is a financial win for the company and that probly why governments and organisation management talk about short staffing and really are slow to do anything about.
Pablo Gomez says
I’m on the same side, the issue can be solved by not going to work and let the managers look after the residents. Only this way the staffing issue will be resolved. When the residents become infectious and starting to die, will the owners of the organisations and the politicians step out of the comfort zone and fix the problem. I’m up for it, I’m forward to a long term strike without minimal service guarantee. Let the politicians care for the helderly. I left age carer and support the age care worker’s. I know what is going on and don’t want to return, No more work for greedy private organisations.