South Australian nursing at crisis point

Public sector nurses from hospitals across South Australia have given 
the State Government until September 17 to meet agreed nurse-patient ratios 
or face industrial action. A mass meeting of nurses and midwives on 
September 3 put the Government on notice: they will no longer accept 
workloads which compromise patient safety.

The stopwork meeting endorsed the use of legal action against the Rann 
Labor Government in the Federal Court, over its failure to meet agreed 
nurse-patient ratios under the current Enterprise Bargaining Agreement.

Nurses are also demanding an immediate increase in staffing levels at 
country hospitals to match those in the metropolitan area, and compensation 
for rural hospitals for the additional non-nursing work undertaken by their 
nurses.

As part of the campaign nurses will also adhere to minimum nursing levels 
in operating theatres and emergency and casualty wards.

"We now have a situation where many of our public hospitals are attempting 
to operate with between 10-25 per cent less nursing staff than required", 
said Lee Thomas, Secretary of the South Australian Branch of the Australian 
Nursing Federation.

"South Australians need to be aware that if they go into a public hospital 
their care could be unsatisfactory because we simply do not have the 
nursing staff numbers to meet all their needs."

Ms Thomas stresses that the action by nurses is about securing a safe and 
professional working environment for nurses and patients. She said the 
situation in rural hospitals was even more drastic with staffing levels 
falling even lower than metropolitan hospitals.

"This situation is made even worse by country nurses being required to take 
on the roles of ward clerks and orderlies, as well as administrative 
duties."

Nurse-to-patient ratios in 14 metropolitan and regional hospitals are 
currently worked out by the Exelcare system, a computer program that was 
due to be superseded two weeks ago, also a part of the Enterprise 
Agreement.

"We are at a crisis point in nursing when the State's major teaching 
hospital, the Royal Adelaide Hospital, has to close ten per cent of its 
beds in an attempt to reduce the workloads and cope with the nursing 
shortage", warned Ms Thomas.

"Nurses are angered and disappointed. We need long-term solutions to the 
nursing shortage but also short-term solutions to ensure patient safety."