Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison released the Commission’s Terms of Reference on October 9 saying the country had to “brace itself for some difficult stories”, reported the Australian Associated Press. Morrison also said he saw the commission as the first step in “re-establishing the trust that loved ones will be treated with dignity and with respect”.
But the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation said a Royal Commission would do nothing to fix the crisis in aged care unless the Government introduced mandated staffing ratios in residential nursing homes as “a matter of urgency”.
The Federation launched a major campaign at the beginning of 2018 calling for mandated staffing including a petition that has received more than 230,000 signatures. The Federation says currently residents received around 2.86 hours of care per day from nurses and carers which was “nowhere near enough time to shower, toilet, medicate, dress, feed, roll over or move – let alone talk to – a resident”. It says residents should instead receive a minimum of 4.3 hours per day.
It argues that a Royal Commission will delay action to address “dangerous understaffing in nursing homes across the country” with “too often” only one registered nurse to manage the care for over 100 residents or “only one carer to feed, bathe, dress and mobilise 16 residents in less than an hour”.
The Government’s initial request for a Royal Commission was announced on September 16 the day before an ABC Four Corners investigation into the care of the elderly in Australian rest homes.
The two commissioners are due to release an interim report on 31 October 2019, with a final report due on 30 April 2020.
The inquiry is to be based in Adelaide where cases of rest home abuse at a state-run nursing home prompted a senate inquiry last year.
]]>The Victorian branch of the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation has welcomed a $705 million boost for mental health in Victoria’s May 1 Budget, including $32.5 million extra being invested in the mental health nursing workforce and free training for enrolled nurses from next year.
The Federation said the new mental health initiatives announced in the Budget state’s government, led by Labor’s Daniel Andrews, included extra regional rehabilitation facilities, new emergency department ‘crisis hubs’ for patients with urgent mental health, and drug and alcohol issues and education opportunities, as well as expanding the mental health nursing workforce.
It added that the major plank of the mental health initiatives was investing $100.5 million to create six emergency department ‘crisis hubs’ across the state, to be staffed with specialised nurses with the aim of providing a safer environment to deal with patients presenting with serious mental health or addiction issues. The ‘crisis hubs’ were also intended to help police know which hospitals to take affected people to for expert care.
Paul Gilbert, acting secretary for the Victoria branch, said it congratulated the Andrews Government for “listening to nurses’ concerns and responding with fundamental changes to the mental health model for the care of patients in the acute and recovery stages that will benefit the whole community”.
‘The new crisis hubs will mean the patient is safer and so are the other emergency department patients, the nurses, the doctors, the security guards and the police,’ he said.
The Budget also announced $32.5 million for 31 supernumerary clinical liaison nurses to support less experienced nurses and doctors caring for vulnerable patients, 110 additional postgraduate mental health nursing positions and funding for 40 registered nurses to undertake education in mental health nursing.
As part of reforming clinical mental health services the Government was also providing $28.6 million for more intensive clinical nursing services in the state’s existing Prevention and Recovery Care Units (PARC) that were designed to reduce pressure in acute services. PARCs provide short-term residential care for people with a mental illness.
A further $11.9 million was to be spent on building a new 20-bed residential facility for young people with a mental illness, focusing on early interventions and tailored support.
An extra $40.6 million was in the budget to fund construction of three new 30-bed addiction residential treatment facilities in the State.
The $2.1 billion state Budget for health included hospital upgrades and equipment, more elective surgery and increased workforce immunisation.
Also from 2019 the Diploma of Nursing – the enrolled nurse qualification has also been recognised as one of the state’s priority fee-free courses.
‘This will help young people in regional and metropolitan Victoria secure a qualification and a job in the growing health sector including private and public acute care and new public aged care facilities,” said Gilbert. “We would also hope the private aged care sector recognise the value of enrolled nurses and makes decisions to recruit ENs instead of the string of redundancies we have recently seen.”
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Ruci Saqayalo is one of the Kiwi nurses who cross the Tasman each year and decide not to come back.
Better pay, a better climate and not being offered a permanent position in her former home town of Wellington all contributed to her and her family moving to Adelaide last year.
Several colleagues from her BN (Pacific) graduating class of 2014 at Whitireia had crossed the Tasman before her and another followed soon after. Whether her colleagues plan to cross back is unknown, but Saqayalo, her husband and 14-year-old son are happy with their decision and are planning to stay.
After finishing her degree in 2014 Saqayalo, 43, accepted an NETP (nursing entry to practice) place at Wellington Hospital based at the emergency department’s short stay unit. After her new graduate year she was unsuccessful in getting a permanent job at the short stay unit and instead was taken on as a permanent member of the hospital’s nursing bureau.
Saqayalo, who is originally from Fiji and moved to Wellington in 2010, made further attempts to get a permanent ward position unsuccessfully.
“I’d been for a few interviews for permanent positions and didn’t get them. And I thought, ‘you know what, it’s just best to go overseas and get some experience in Australia and probably move on’.”
She says being taken on by the bureau worked well for her. “We were sent to any ward in the hospital and I got the experience of working across all the specialties.”
During a recruiting drive by the Australian agency Healthcare Australia, that now employs her, she discovered her varied experience was one of the things that agencies looked for.
Saqayalo had never been to Australia until she made the move last July, so she wasn’t sure where to go and how better off financially they would actually be.
“We thought it might just be hearsay but we also thought we should come over and find out for ourselves and it’s really true.” Working as an agency nurse, her pay is much better and she has found the cost of living in Adelaide “quite cheap”.
Since arriving in July, she has been sent on shifts at the 800-bed Royal Adelaide Hospital and the 300-bed Queen Elizabeth Hospital, along with several private hospitals.
She says the workload is very similar to what she experienced as a bureau nurse at Wellington Hospital and the work environment is no less stressful. But the pay is good and she is getting constant work.
Just recently she was sent to work in Royal Adelaide’s intensive care department, and found herself enjoying an experience that she had never had in Wellington. (She has heard since that the Royal Adelaide wasn’t taking on permanent staff, which may have been why it was employing expensive external agency staff.)
Saqayalo is conscious that she and her Pacific classmates are moving to Australia at the same time that New Zealand’s health leaders are talking about wanting to build the Pacific nursing workforce to better meet local health needs.
“We tend to talk about that with my colleagues – and it is a shame,” says Saqayalo.
She says she would have stayed if she’d obtained a job with much better pay. “But I’m getting double what I used to get back in Wellington, to tell the truth.”
A colleague who has just followed – also Fijian – has left behind in New Zealand her grown-up children to come over with her husband to take up a lucrative ‘rural and remote’ contract in Queensland.
Other classmates who crossed the Tasman before her were from other Pacific backgrounds, including Samoa and the Cook Islands.
Saqayalo says it was not only the pay that attracted her Pacific colleagues across the Tasman: being on a one-year NETP programme contract meant they didn’t get the security of a permanent position on completing their new graduate year.
So is she ever planning to come back? “No, I’m not coming back, sorry,” she laughs. “But I will probably come back to visit.”
At the moment she is still enjoying agency work – both the pay and working in a variety of hospitals and specialities.
Where her career goes from here, she is not sure. “Nursing can take us anywhere; the flexibility – it is just great.”
]]>The latest Nursing Council statistics for nurses seeking verification of their registration so they can practice in Australia show 1555 nurses applied in the year to March 31 2017 – more than double the rate of two years ago.
Since about 2006 the number of Kiwi nurses applying to nurse across the ditch had been steady at around 1200 to 1500 but had slumped to just 750 in the 2014-15 year and rose only slightly to 819 in 2015-16.
The 2017 statistics showed a steep increase in nurses seeking to nurses overseas in all destinations (up from 1272 in 2015-16 to 1804 in 2016-17) but has still not reached the peak years of 2001-02 and 2011-12 when more than 2200 nurses sort verification of their registration to work overseas.
How many of last year’s 1555 applicants were planning to permanently move to Australia in is unknown as a number of Kiwi nurses are known to cross backwards and forwards across the Tasman to take on lucrative short-term – mostly rural and remote – nursing contracts.
What is known from Nursing Council annual practising certificate (APC) stats is that in 2016 there were 1347 overseas-based nurses with valid New Zealand APCs. Which indicates that many nurses keep the option open of returning to nurse in New Zealand.
Outgoing Chief Nurse Dr Jane O’Malley said Kiwis would continue to go to Australia but what was most important was ensuring that new graduate nurses start their careers in New Zealand. “So when they finish in Australia they are more likely to come back and practice in New Zealand then if they had never practised here.”
She was particularly encouraged by the latest Ministry of Health and ACE analysis which indicated that 86 per cent (806) of the 2012 nurse graduates who gained a place in a government-subsidised NETP (Nurse Entry to Practice) programmes were still in nursing five years on – and only about a dozen of those were not practising in New Zealand. Overall more than 80 per cent of the 1514 new graduates registered in 2012 were still nursing in New Zealand five years after graduating.
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