Workplace News
Health care sector leads in WHS injury stats
The health care and social assistance sector has again laid claim to the shameful statistic of leading the country in terms of injuries sustained at work.
A Safe Work Australia report has found that 21 603 health care and social assistance workers sustained a serious injury at work in the 2021 reporting period, accounting for a 10% increase from the previous reporting period. Serious injuries are considered to be those which require a worker to be absent for a week or longer on workers compensation.
These injuries in the health care and social assistance sector account for 18% of all injuries sustained by workers in the workplace.
Comparatively, other industries usually considered more “dangerous” such as construction and manufacturing account for just 13% and 12% respectively.
According to the research, this means that 12.3 health care workers were injured for every 1 000 workers in the industry.
NSW Nurses and Midwives’ Association General Secretary, Brett Holmes, indicated that improvements must be made in the sector to keep nurses and midwives safe.
“Nurses and midwives are highly regarded community members. They deserve better,” he said.
“No-one should feel unsafe in the workplace”.
The NSW Nurses and Midwives’ Association is leading the charge on ensuring health care workplaces are safer for staff. To find out more about our Safer Work, Safer Care campaign, visit our website.
Jennifer Leonard says
I had a work place injury last December 2020, since then catholic care insurance accepted liability for this injury. Since then I was off work then I got a letter in September to stated the claim was finished. I still can’t walk proper. My GP gave me a certificate for modified dutes. I got a email from my manager stated I cant go back to work cause off the modified dutes. I’m an EEN this puts my reg outs . I do not know what I’m gonna do now im so stressed
Katherine says
I always wondered what it would feel like to reach that point , when you knew you wanted and had to retire from nursing. Several factors came together. Firstly the abuse from the middle managers, which I would say has improved in my 35 years of work, but hasn’t gone away. The problematic people are known to the staff, but left in their positions for way too long. Generally their joy in tearing apart their latest victims goes ahead unabated. Resulting in loss of morale, loss of staff, and the psychic injury to dedicated nurses. Somebody needs to hear those alarm bells.
Secondly, conditions where nurses are used as beasts of burden, pushing heavy beds, stripping and carrying linen, no porter support for moving patients around the facility, especially in the pm shifts. Finally I realised I had been working on painkillers for the last couple of years, maybe longer. I am not alone in this. When I started to limp about, I noticed how many others also limp about their work. There is little consideration, after years of occupational health and safety research, of the toll of repetitive stress and excessive strain on a nurse’s body after years of being used as a donkey. Nurses work on without ancillary support, despite university educations, I do feel in fact this situation has worsened.
I laughed at Professor Dumbledore, in Harry Potter, who said one of their teachers “had retired to spend time with their remaining limbs”, I found sympathy with that professor!
Also I became sick and tired of being badgered about admitting my age to my colleagues, I found it discriminatory, and it used to be rude to ask a lady’s age.
On the second lockdown, I called it quits, the current crop of nurses do not remember AIDS, I remember wards full of patients suffering the mystery virus. Covid-19 is not my first pandemic.
So I am now spending time with my remaining limbs, wrecked back, crunching neck, arthritic changes in my hips. And the memory of the abuse for hard work.
I miss you all.