The NSWNMA’s Liverpool Hospital branch has called on the NSW government to take concrete steps to alleviate the staffing crisis impacting many of the state’s hospitals.
Liverpool Hospital Branch secretary Mirabel Nelson says south-west Sydney’s hospitals, including Liverpool, are experiencing an “unofficial emergency response”.
“I say unofficial because politicians are refusing to actually acknowledge this current disaster.
“We are told we are coping well. I wish our government would ask us – the frontline COVID nurses – if we are coping, instead of speaking for us,” she said.
Premier Dominic Perrottet has repeatedly asserted that hospitals are in a “strong position” and Chief Health Officer Dr Kerry Chant claimed the health system was “very well placed” to cope with rising hospitalisation rates.
Mirabel said the government should acknowledge the extent of staffing shortfalls and their effect on nurses, midwives and patients.
“We’re definitely not OK, our health system is not OK, and our patients are not OK.”
She challenged Premier Perrottet and Prime Minister Scott Morrison to “throw on a pair of scrubs and work a double shift” in the hospital’s emergency department.
“ED is just jammed with patients, who sometimes have to wait 12 hours or more for a bed on a ward.”
Dangerous staffing levels
“Our hospitals are crippled with dangerous staffing levels and our staff have hit a level of exhaustion that is mostly incompatible with basic functioning.”
When The Guardian newspaper visited Liverpool Hospital in early January, it found the main ED waiting room was full and would-be patients were spilling out into the street in 30-degree heat.
The Guardian said a 70-year-old woman with stomach pain had been waiting four hours to be seen and a young woman was vomiting into a plastic bag as she waited.
Mirabel said Liverpool Hospital was understaffed even before the pandemic and called for mandatory staffing ratios “to make management accountable for safe staffing”.
“If we had strict staffing ratios in place before the pandemic, we would be far better off now.
“The fact that we don’t have ratios like Queensland and other states gives management too much leeway to make us work short.
“On my ward pre-COVID, when we were down to four staff instead of the five or six we normally had, we would just have to wear it.
“It doesn’t matter if we are run off our feet, stressed or missing out on breaks. We just get told there is no other option, that we just don’t have the staff.”
Incident reports needed
Mirabel urged her colleagues to lodge incident management reports whenever their shift is understaffed.
“Our patients’ safety and our own safety is threatened by a poor working environment.
“We need to be strong enough to make incident reports without worrying that there could be any backlash.”
At Liverpool, five general wards and two ICU wards had been set aside for COVID patients by mid-January.
Mirabel usually works in Liverpool’s oncology and palliative care ward but has been regularly deployed to a COVID respiratory ward.
“We are all working huge amounts of overtime, we are spending more time at work than with our own families. It’s been going on for at least two years and we are not coping, that’s for sure.
“We obviously weren’t trained to work in a pandemic but we feel an obligation to help out even when we are dead tired.
“As nurses we care about our patients, and we care about each other. I will always agree to do a double shift because I want to make sure my patients are safe and my colleagues are safe.”
Over-reliant on juniors
She said many senior nurses were taking early retirement. “They haven’t seen any progress on staffing in many years of nursing and they are sick of it, which is sad.
“Their departure is leaving us over-reliant on junior nurses, who are working without adequate support.
“Our educators are having to take patient loads, and other senior nurses who would normally mentor new grads are leaving or taking on in-charge roles or NUM roles for others who are off on COVID-related leave.
“An email went out to all the new grads saying if you have your registration now and are willing to start, we will take you now, without waiting for your official intake.
“It’s too much for a new grad to be thrown in at the deep end when we don’t have the support system we normally would have.”
Mirabel said the NSW government has had two years to put adequate measures in place to help staff handle the current surge in patient numbers.
“By telling us we have to live with the virus, and not taking extra steps to support us, the government is taking advantage of nurses’ goodwill.”
She criticised the Perrottet government’s attempt to strip nurses and other essential workers of their automatic right to workers compensation cover for COVID-19.
Mirabel said it is very hard for nurses to know and prove exactly where they caught the virus.