Mandatory care minutes for aged care residents are now law, but some employers are dodging their responsibilities. Aged care workers can help to make sure providers obey the rules.
“Nothing has changed at my workplace. It is even worse than before. Not sure where all the budget is going. Past few weeks have been very difficult due to the workload, understaffing, and absolutely no support from the management team.”
So wrote a registered nurse (RN) at an aged care facility in Sydney’s southwest recently.
The RN added, “We are getting more residents with very difficult behaviours; more incidents to report; new admissions with no paperwork; the pressure to complete assessments and care plans while minding all residents, resident/family complaints, medication administration, doctors’ rounds; it just goes on and on. I’ve never felt so burnt out.”
The nurse is one of dozens of aged care workers who have told similar stories in answer to an NSWNMA written survey.
The stories show that some facilities are failing to meet new mandatory care minutes for residents, despite receiving extra government funding for that purpose.
Since 1 October 2023, residents must receive, on average, 200 minutes of care each day – including at least 40 minutes from an RN.
From 1 October 2024, this will be boosted to 215 minutes of care, including 44 minutes delivered by an RN.
Under the new law, the government sets quarterly care-minute targets for every aged care facility, based on the needs of residents living in the home over the previous three months.
Staff, residents and their families are able to track the requirements via the federal Department of Health and Aged Care website.
Aged Care Watch website
NSWNMA General Secretary, Shaye Candish, urged members to help the NSWNMA make providers stick to the new legal standards.
“Aged care workers now have an opportunity to help monitor and enforce the new care standards,” she said.
“An updated ‘Aged Care Watch’ website will allow staff, residents and families to publish their stories about the state of care in their facilities, while remaining anonymous.
“By telling us their experiences, members can help us to put pressure on providers to do the right thing.”
The website was set up by the NSWNMA in partnership with the Queensland Nurses’ and Midwives’ Union and the United Workers Union.
“It is essential members speak up and let us know if they suspect their employer is failing to meet their obligations,” Shaye said.
She pointed out that mandatory care minutes and other important changes, such as requiring RNs to be employed in facilities 24/7, came about as a result of a long campaign by NSWNMA members and others.
The campaign forced the former federal government to establish the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety, which recommended every aged care facility follow care-time targets that reflect the needs of their residents.
“The NSWNMA will continue to campaign for greater transparency and accountability measures to ensure care minutes are delivered as intended,” Shaye said.
“We will also continue to push for aged care workers to have greater power in enforcing the delivery of these reforms.” n
https://www.agedcarewatch.org.au/
Stories of understaffing and neglect
Staff doing unpaid work and missing their breaks. Residents left soiled for long periods because workers are too busy to answer the bell. Staff required to perform tasks outside the scope of their role. Residents not receiving adequate care, and medication incidents.
These are just some of the consequences of understaffing reported to the NSWNMA in response to a written survey.
“We are constantly short of AiNs, as there is a limited staff pool to pull from to fill shifts,” wrote an RN at a NSW North Coast nursing home.
“ENs are doing care staff tasks and duties, RNs are doing routine medication rounds, and often there is no functional in-charge nurse role.
“Even RNs sometimes are doing personal care due to lack of staffing. There is minimal use of agency staff for AiNs, when there is a high demand for it.”
In a typical response, an assistant in nursing at a facility in Sydney’s northwest wrote, “We always have to work understaffed. We have to attend double-assist by one staff only. No replacement for first sick call. No kitchen staff, and staff have to handle medication, residents and kitchen when we are understaffed.”
An RN at a nursing home south-west of Sydney reported that some RNs were being replaced with Certificate IV-qualified staff, leaving the remaining RNs covering their floor to cope the best they could.
“We RNs have to administer medications. If there is any incident during the round, we have to leave the meds trolley to attend it. Meds rounds are interrupted and many times we don’t finish it on time.
“We are understaffed. We need more staff for difficult residents, behaviourally unstable residents, for high falls-risk residents, for full-care/high-care residents. Call bells are still not answered on time due to staff being busy with other residents.”
An endorsed enrolled nurse (EEN) reported that a facility southwest of Sydney was even more understaffed than before the introduction of mandatory care minutes.
“A ratio of 32-to-1 RN/EEN is bonkers. I don’t get a break and if I do, it is interrupted by phone calls or management,” the EEN wrote.
An RN at a Blue Mountains facility reported their workload had increased as a result of a cut in hours for night-shift carers.
“I continue to work through my unpaid meal break. Meanwhile, management emails us about unacceptably high call-bell response times,” the member noted.