Not a great start, and simply not good enough …

Well, a new year, but like a bad amalgam of the past two. A year barely a month old and already full of records – but all the wrong ones. Record numbers of COVID-19, with record-high hospitalisations and deaths, all accompanied by unprecedented nursing and midwifery shortages.

A PCR testing system that was all but crushed through sheer demand. Another clunky vaccination rollout. And solutions reduced to not much more than to waive the rules on close contacts, sending back to the front line health and other workers who would have been (and should have been) at home, isolating. Keeping COVID out of facilities has become a far more ethereal concept in year three of the pandemic.

The one constant, sadly, was the unrelenting pressure and demand placed upon all health workers, but especially nurses and midwives. Leaders and bureaucrats often offer platitudes but there is no tangible recognition and support beyond those words.

Will any one of them remember this when determining your pay, working conditions, or required safe staffing levels when award or agreement discussions become due? Or will they, true to form, simply develop negotiation amnesia. We must ensure they never forget.