Nurses and midwives at John Hunter Hospital in Newcastle win a breakthrough in a long-running staffing dispute. 

The NSWNMA and Hunter New England Local Health District management have reached consensus on several staffing and policy issues following four months of discussions overseen by the NSW Industrial Relations Commission.

Acting General Secretary of the NSWNMA, Judith Kiejda, said the outcomes were “a win for hundreds of nurses and midwives who have been hammered by safe staffing and workload concerns for many months”.

David Pfanner, NSWNMA branch vice president and delegate at John Hunter, said the branch had developed a good working relationship with the hospital executive.

“Management appear to be making a serious effort to settle outstanding issues,” he said.

“We were holding weekly meetings of the Reasonable Workloads Committee to sort things out.

“We have now reverted to monthly meetings but management say they are happy to meet more often if we think it’s needed.

“The chief executive of the LHD is now on board with what we are doing and Commissioner Stanton (from the Industrial Relations Commission) said it was great to see management and union working together to solve problems.”

He said management had abandoned its policy of prioritising follow-up phone calls to discharged patients over the care of inpatients.

“The new procedure is that if we can’t reach a discharged patient after two attempts we do not have to keep calling.  Also, follow-up calls no longer take precedence over urgent patient care or when we have a heavy workload.

“Follow-up phone calls are important but they should not be allowed to reduce the already-limited time available to care for in-patients.”

Management agree to like-for-like replacements

He said management had also changed its policy on replacing unplanned leave.

“Too often in the past an absent registered nurse would be replaced by someone of a lower classification such as an assistant in nursing.

“This practice puts a lot of pressure on senior nurses who are trying to manage their own clinical workload while assisting lower-classification nurses with their patients.

“Management have now agreed to make every effort to achieve ‘like for like’ replacements including use of overtime.

“If they cannot do so they must fill out forms to show what steps they have taken to find a like-for- like replacement.”

David said the branch hoped to soon reach agreement on the staffing of close observation beds and the use of ‘specials’, or one-to-one nursing care, which has often left wards effectively short staffed.

He said management were making genuine efforts to fill vacancies but experienced staff were often hard to find.

“We have had a lot of problems finding experienced staff to fill vacancies especially in areas like theatre and midwifery.”

The branch wrote to management in June last year outlining concerns relating to patient and staff safety across the facility.

Concerns included the opening of unfunded and understaffed beds, forced excessive overtime, sick leave not being replaced, an excessive use of under-qualified staff, missed meal breaks and unpaid overtime.

After trying unsuccessfully to resolve issues through the Reasonable Workloads Committee the union took action under the Industrial Relations Act to obtain hospital data that would reveal the extent of understaffing.

The data showed that the LHD repeatedly failed to staff wards and units according to the minimum six nursing care hours per patient, per day, as set out in the Public Health System Award.

As a result, John Hunter patients missed out on 6,695 hours of nursing care from late December 2016 to
July 2017.

More than 200 nurses and midwives attended a protest meeting outside the hospital and a secret ballot of more than 250 staff voted almost unanimously in favour of a ban on follow-up discharge phone calls.

David said the branch had to agree to lift the ban in order for the commissioner to hear the union’s case.

“However, the ban had an enormous impact in terms of showing management how serious we were about getting a solution to the problems.”

He said John Hunter members had “terrific support from union head office staff, organisers and officials” who spoke at meetings, argued the nurses’ case in the media, took the issue to the commission and negotiated with
top management.

“General Secretary Brett Holmes had a big impact when he went on TV to explain how the LHD deliberately breached the award by not rostering and recruiting the necessary staff.

“He explained to the public how patients were being cheated out of the nursing hours they were legally entitled to and how nurses had to work harder as a result.”

David said the branch came out of the dispute in a stronger position.

“Some of our branch meetings attracted 150 people and we picked up quite a few new members.

‘The hospital recently had its biggest ever intake and almost all of them joined the union.”

Members of the NSWNMA… share your thoughts on articles in the Lamp or anything else important to you as nurses and midwives by sending a Letter to the Editor. Four letters are published in the Lamp each month and the letter chosen as Letter of the Month will win a gift card. Please include a high-resolution photo along with your name, address, phone and membership number. You can submit your letter by emailing the Lamp: lamp@nswnma.asn.au