“We are determined to get staffing ratios. This is not going to go away. We are over people having to work short, burning out and leaving.”

That’s how Prince of Wales Hospital Branch President Jan Ogden sums up the mood of her fellow nurses following the Berejiklian government’s refusal to consider staffing ratios.

Combined with its measly pay offer, the government’s response has left nurses feeling “slighted and insulted” Jan says.

“In the International Year of the Nurse and Midwife, in the middle of a COVID pandemic, it was insulting to be offered a 1.04 per cent pay increase for 2021–22, following a piddling 0.3 per cent last year.”

Jan, who is the NSWNMA branch president and delegate at POW Hospital, attended a lunchtime protest rally of about 50–60 nurses outside the hospital.

“There is a very deep feeling of anger that we haven’t been given ratios despite having propped up the system through a long period of staff shortages and people working ridiculous amounts of overtime,” she says.

“We’ve got lots of young parents who are nurses. They can’t maintain these levels of overtime with no recognition from the government. It’s just too hard and too disheartening.

“People are leaving the profession in frightening numbers. They are burnt out, they don’t feel their registration is safe and, most importantly, don’t feel their patients are safe.

“We know there are a lot of new grads who can’t get positions, yet we don’t have enough nurses in the hospital. That’s totally inappropriate.

“There has been no proper acknowledgement of the risks we’ve faced, including COVID, and what we’ve given up. The government shouldn’t continue to get up in public and say ‘nurses are heroes; we respect you’, because it doesn’t.

“The federal and state governments are splashing money around everywhere, yet in NSW there is a virtual pay freeze on people who are doing the hard yards.”

Jan says the NSWNMA should continue to campaign for a better deal, drawing on community goodwill towards nurses.

“I think most of the public hold us in high regard,” she says. “They are deeply grateful and respectful of what we’ve done – especially during the pandemic. They do respect nurses’ opinions.

“It’s really important that nurses realise what a great influence they can have on the public.”