October 7, 2024

nsw nurses and midwives

Transformation heralded at nurses and midwives’ conference

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Nurses and midwives have championed the need for pay parity with other states and improved conditions across all sectors and health settings at the NSW Nurses and Midwives’ Association’s (NSWNMA) 79th Annual Conference.

NSWNMA General Secretary Shaye Candish reflected on the past 12 months and spoke of the union’s transformation to achieve members’ shared goals and ambitions, during her keynote address.

“You are ambitious for our professions and rightly so, so am I. Some of this is driven by your desire to see improved pay and conditions, some is driven by your sense of fairness and equity, some is driven by your passion for nursing or midwifery and the need to keep these jobs attractive to future generations. At the very base level, we all know improvements are needed to simply stop the churn of nurses and midwives leaving the industry,” said Ms Candish.

Ms Candish also highlighted the drive towards rectifying the ingrained undervaluing in the female-dominated nursing and midwifery professions.

“Our membership is transforming on the issue of pay. The current financial crisis, and recent awareness of historic undervaluing based on gender, has helped our membership move its own thinking and language on pay, and the worth and value of nurses and midwives,” said Ms Candish.

Minister for Health and Regional Health Ryan Park addressed members on Thursday and announced the next twelve public hospital emergency departments (EDs) to receive nurse-to-patient ratios including Coffs Harbour, Wollongong, Tamworth, John Hunter, Campbelltown, Bankstown-Lidcombe, The Children’s Hospital at Westmead, Gosford, Royal Prince Alfred, St George, Wagga Wagga and Nepean Hospitals.

NSWNMA Assistant General Secretary Michael Whaites said it was good to see the pace of the ratios rollout picking up across the state.

“Whilst we welcome the Minister’s announcement of additional Level 5 and 6 EDs converting to ratios, we know the current commitment of 2480 full-time equivalent positions is not enough to deliver safe staffing ratios to all areas committed to by this government,” said Mr Whaites.

“In order to honour the election promise made to nurses and midwives last year, the government must address the recruitment and retention barriers of poor pay. It is very clear that a 15% one year pay increase is the solution to rebuilding the nursing and midwifery workforce in NSW.”

During the three day conference, delegates debated motions to improve the working lives of nurses and midwives, and to ensure better health outcomes for patients.

Motions ranged from lobbying for care minutes to be enshrined in the Aged Care Act, improving conditions for regional and rural nurses and supporting private sector safe staffing ratios.

It’s disgusting Mr Morrison hasn’t done his job to fix aged care

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To mark the one-year anniversary of the Royal Commission’s Final Report into the troubled aged care system, members of the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation (ANMF) are speaking out – expressing their heartbreak and disgust that Prime Minister Scott Morrison ‘hasn’t done his job’ to stop the suffering of elderly Australians living in aged care.

The two-year Inquiry, which contained over 10,000 submissions involving distressing evidence from overwhelmed nurses, carers, nursing home residents and their families, confirmed what the ANMF has known for far too long – that elderly Australians in privately-run aged care facilities were receiving sub-standard care because of dangerously-low staffing levels.

The Royal Commission recommended that staff ratios be introduced into aged care, but 12-months on and despite worsening staffing exacerbated by the COVID pandemic, Mr Morrison and his Ministers have done nothing to fix it.

Aged care nurses and care-workers are angry, frustrated and dismayed at the Government’s lack of action and are voicing their concerns in a series of national TV and radio commercials and a social media campaign, starting today.

In one TV ad, aged care nurse Samantha wipes away a tear as she says: ‘If you were to come into an aged care facility and see what I see every day you’d be heartbroken, you’d be disgusted and you’d want to make a change too. Because our residents deserve more. Our staff deserve more and change needs to happen.’

Another nurse, Irene, tells the Government: ‘What part of this don’t you get? You’ve had that many testimonies and people saying what’s going wrong in aged care. We’re saying it’s in crisis. Why aren’t you believing us? What are you going to do about it? I want a government that’s got some guts. That will take a stance on this; that will give us the resources we need.’

Today, nurses and carers will stage a series of protests outside the offices of Government Ministers and MPs, including the Devonport office of Richard Colbeck, the Minister responsible for Senior Australians and Aged Care Services, whose lack of regard for older Australians was infamously laid bare by his choice to attend an Ashes test match instead of a Parliamentary Inquiry into the COVID outbreak sweeping through Australia’s nursing homes.

The ANMF will also participate in an online forum ‘Aged Care in Crisis: 12 months on from the Royal Commission – what needs to happen next?’, involving members of the aged care workforce and a panel of high-profile advocates and experts, discussing what it will take to ensure a quality aged care system.

Commenting on the day of action, ANMF Federal Secretary Annie Butler said today: “Our nurses and carers are telling us they’re disgusted that Mr Morrison and his Government have done nothing to fix aged care. A year since the Royal Commission delivered its Final Report, with one of its key recommendations for staffing ratios, nothing’s changed. There’s still not enough staff to give residents the basic care they need.

“While the Prime Minister, Health Minister and Aged Care Minister refuse to do their job, our members will not. Nurses and care-workers will not stand by and watch those in our care suffer any longer – the message is clear – no more talking, no more ‘taskforces’, no more ‘inquiries’, no more deferring responsibility – only action.

“We also know that the whole community now understands the state of the crisis in aged care.

We can and we must fix it now. We need a Government that will take responsibility for caring for older Australians and make staff ratios law. As our ANMF members say, we need a Government with guts.”

 

Aged care vaccine rollout “an absolute debacle”

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By the end of April, barely 10 per cent of Australia’s 330,000 aged care workers had been vaccinated, though they are classified in the 1a group for the highest priority frontline staff.

Fewer than one-third of aged care facilities had administered both doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to their residents eight weeks into the program, as logistics companies fail to deliver the vaccines, health providers fail to show up and the vast majority of workers have no clear access to vaccinations, the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) reported.

One major aged care provider told the SMH that the rollout was “an absolute debacle”.

Aged care providers told the SMH that their workers did not have access to the NSW Health-operated hubs that vaccinate the highest priority groups, such as frontline medical workers and hotel quarantine staff, because aged care falls under the federal government. NSW Health confirmed this.

The Morrison government said its initial strategy of inoculating staff at their workplace was “under review”.

The federal government had planned to send dedicated teams to aged care facilities to vaccinate staff and to establish offsite “pop-up” vaccination hubs.

The ACTU said the government walked away from these commitments.

“These workers were told they would be treated with the same urgency and attention as other frontline health staff, but many will end up waiting six months to be vaccinated,” said ACTU Assistant Secretary Liam O’Brien.

Education and professional development vital

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The aged care royal commission wants the federal government to establish a national registration scheme for carers.

The royal commission says registration of carers should incorporate a mandatory minimum qualification of a Certificate III, ongoing training requirements and minimum English-language levels.

The registration scheme should be up and running by 1 July 2022, it says.

It suggests transitional arrangements be put in place for existing care workers who do not meet minimum requirements.

They should be allowed to apply for registration based on their experience and prior learning.

The commissioners agree with the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation (ANMF) that “personal care workers should be provided with support to complete the qualification, including reasonable time to enrol, paid study leave, workplace mentoring support and technological supports to complete coursework”.

“We are in no doubt that a registration scheme is required for personal care workers.”

They say that “regulation of personal care workers by registration, with a mandatory minimum qualification requirement, ongoing training requirements, a code of conduct, and a complaint process, will help to professionalise and improve the quality of the personal care worker workforce”.

They point out there is “currently no formal industry standard for an entry-level qualification to work as a personal care worker”.

“Aged care workers need to have good quality, and easily accessible, ongoing training and professional development opportunities available to them.

“Such training and professional development opportunities must reflect the contemporary and future care needs of older people.”

Tie funding to education

The commission says that from 1 July 2021, federal, state and territory governments should “fast-track the development of accredited, nationally recognised short courses, skills sets and micro-credentials”.

It points out that the federal government contributes 80 per cent of the cost of aged care.

The commission says the government should therefore tie aged care subsidies to “a standard amount per employee to support ongoing training and development for existing and new personal care workers”.

“Approved providers must support the aged care workforce to access ongoing training through financial assistance to cover or part-cover the training, paid leave to attend training, and promotion of an organisational culture that values skills development.”

The commission points out that training courses are not always available locally and workers cannot always attend courses in person due to work and family commitments.

It therefore recommends that short courses be made available and delivered electronically.

“High-quality and targeted short courses, including micro-credentials, are a suitable way to address skills gaps, satisfy continuing professional development requirements, or enable people to gradually work towards a formal qualification in the new aged care system.

“They can enable new and existing employees to build specific skills of high relevance to aged care work.”

‘We are in no doubt that a registration scheme is required for personal care workers.’ — Royal Commission

‘We will have to keep pressure on the government’

Aged care workers will have to campaign to ensure all government funding is linked to increased staffing and higher wages, says commission witness.

An NSWNMA member who gave evidence to the aged care royal commission has welcomed its findings – and urged unions and the public to maintain pressure on the government to promptly implement them.

Assistant in Nursing Susan Walton gave evidence to the commission about what it was like to work at a chronically understaffed nursing home.

Susan joined with other NSWNMA members in campaigning at election time and travelling to Canberra to lobby MPs for aged care improvements.

Susan welcomes the commission’s recognition that aged care is understaffed and its workforce is underpaid and under-skilled.

“The commission recognises that a better system will cost more, and that extra funding needs to lead to more staff and higher pay.

“We will have to keep pressure on the government to make sure this happens.”

She says the commission’s recommendation for mandatory minimum staff times per resident is a good move.

“We have to make sure that the recommendations lead to employment of more staff.

“We can’t keep on working short and doing double shifts as normal practice.”

Link funding to care and wages

It will be vital to ensure that all government funding is linked to direct care and staff wages, Susan says.

She points to a current campaign by aged care employers for more funding for the sector.

The ‘It’s Time to Care About Aged Care’ campaign is being run by the new Australian Aged Care Collaboration (AACC) alliance, which includes not-for-profit providers and a number of private operators.

“Their petition for more government support makes no mention of what they intend to do with the extra funding,” she points out.

She describes the commission’s recommendation for a registration scheme for care workers as “a fantastic idea that should have been brought in long ago”.

“Staff need to be fully qualified to deal with our vulnerable elderly people. A six-week course is not enough, and you need to be able to speak English adequately.

“Also, further education and training should be delivered by organisations and people who are properly qualified. It should be paid for by the employers, from the extra funding they will receive, but it shouldn’t necessarily be delivered by them.”

Susan says it’s essential for care workers to learn how to deal sympathetically and effectively with people with dementia.

“I see inexperienced carers who do not know how to care for our elderly who have dementia.

“They don’t realise they can’t change their behaviour, don’t recognise the signs of their disease, and don’t know how to approach their challenging behaviour.

“When a carer takes the wrong approach, it can change the resident’s behaviour immediately and make it extremely difficult for the resident.

“It’s not hard to realise that having more qualified staff, and staff to resident ratios would change the lives of residents and staff members dramatically for the better.

“Following the Royal Commission report there is now no excuse not to immediately start to implement these improvements.”

Skills ‘inadequate’ for sub-acute patients

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NSWNMA member Mary Gibbs, when giving evidence to an NSW Upper House inquiry, underlined the need to raise skill levels in aged care.

RN Mary Gibbs has worked in both private and public hospitals and in for-profit and non-profit aged care. She has held senior leadership roles in the last 20 years.

She recently gave evidence to an NSW Upper House inquiry into whether RNs should be on duty in nursing homes at all times.

Mary said regulations covering the aged care sector are insufficient to help staff provide the fundamental care needed.

“My colleagues and I have always felt that aged care here is the second cousin to the health industry,” she said.

She told the inquiry that the workforce generally lacks the skills required by modern aged care facilities.

“Aged care facilities are now all sub-acute units – extensions of sub-acute units from the hospitals with the complexity of the residents that are coming out of those facilities.

“We are getting early discharges and complex care. We are getting residents with behavioural and mental health issues.

“The junior workforce is not skilled to manage that. It is solely reliant on an RN’s ability to do clinical assessments and work with the general practitioners in the community.”

Mary said the current work-force skill mix includes aged care workers with only three to six months’ experience.

“That experience is basically ticking the boxes and doing 120 hours of clinical practice wherever they have been sent.

“They do not understand the concept of aged care and gerontology. They do not understand (dementia). They do not understand the behaviour management strategies that they have to put in place.”

She said some in the aged care workforce see aged care as a stepping stone to other career paths.

Mary told the inquiry that aged care needs to be treated as a part of and similar to the health system and be given “the resources that they have in the hospital system, particularly if we are expected to take sub-acute residents”.

‘Aged care facilities are now all sub-acute units – extensions of sub-acute units from the hospitals with the complexity of the residents that are coming out of those facilities’ — Mary Gibbs

Wage increases essential for economic recovery: RBA

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Improved wages remain central to any recovery from the pandemic, according to the Reserve Bank of Australia.

For years, the governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, Philip Lowe, has said wages growth in Australia needs to “have a three in front of it” for our economy to prosper.

His was not a lone voice. The former head of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, was similarly outspoken about stagnant wages acting as a drag on economic growth in developed countries like Australia.

The COVID pandemic has not changed this analysis from our central bank.

In an address to the Australian Financial Review Business Summit on 10 March in Sydney, Lowe mentioned wages more than a dozen times.

In the speech, titled ‘Recovery, Investment and Monetary Policy’, Lowe made it clear that wages are central to the RBA’s policy settings.

“Currently, wages growth is running at just 1.4 per cent, the lowest rate on record. Even before the pandemic, wages were increasing at a rate that was not consistent with the inflation target being achieved. Then the pandemic resulted in a further step-down,” Lowe told the AFR conference.

“This step-down means that we are a long way from a world in which wages growth is running at three per cent plus. The evidence from both Australia and overseas strongly suggests that the journey back to sustainably higher rates of wages growth will take time and will require a tight labour market for an extended period.”

At the same conference, Prime Minister Scott Morrison made a speech on the economy where he had “literally, nothing” to say about wages, Crikey’s political editor, Bernard Keane, pointed out.

“His only proffered ideas around the Australian workforce consist of threatening jobseekers with even more punishment to force them to take underpaid, exploitive jobs, and hankering for the end of the pandemic so he can let businesses get back to relying on temporary migrants,” he said.

“Both are recipes for pushing wages further down, not lifting them. But the government’s strategy is deliberate wage stagnation, and it leads by example with the imposition of real wage cuts on the public service and an industrial relations bill intended to make it easier to cut wages and conditions.

“Rarely has there been a more stark contrast between what the central bank sees as economically crucial, and the ideological frolics of a business donor-controlled government.”

Wages growth in Australia needs to have a three in front of it for our economy to prosper.— Phillip Lowe, Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia

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