Tired and stressed nurses are quitting their jobs at Dubbo Hospital because of the number of patients in their care, reports secretary of its branch of the NSW Nurses and Midwives’ Association (NSWNMA) Lauren Lye.
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Ms Lye told of the impact of current nurse-to-patient ratios at the hospital after a lunchtime gathering on Thursday with fellow branch members.
“It’s one to five, one to six in some departments,” she said.
“Plenty of nurses are walking. Every couple of days you hear of local nurses here leaving the facility, resigning, working somewhere else or going onto a casual list.”
Ms Lye said a ratio of one to four for morning and evening shifts and one to seven for night duty was preferable.
She also argued for an increase in nurse educators for a “large junior workforce”. “They are not 24/7, only one eight-hour shift a day,” she said.
Ms Lye said negotiations with the Western NSW Local Health District on the issue were “not really going anywhere at the moment”.
But on Thursday afternoon the health district’s director nursing and midwifery, Adrian Fahy, said it was “always happy to review requests for additional nursing educational support to ensure all nursing staff feel appropriately supported in the workplace”.
“Dubbo Hospital has a number of nursing education positions including an after-hours facility manager who attends each clinical area at least three times during each shift, clinical nurse educators who provide regular education and clinical resource nurses who are rostered on evening shifts, seven days per week,” he said.
Mr Fahy urged nurses feeling stressed or overworked to reach out to their managers “so appropriate steps can be put in place to ensure these concerns are addressed appropriately”. He said Dubbo Hospital “fully complies with and often exceeds current provisions” for nurses as detailed in their award.
“The nursing ratios referred to by the NSW Nurses and Midwives’ Association are not a component of the current nursing award for any public health facility in NSW,’” the director said.
The NSWNMA has been calling on the state government to improve nurse-to-patient ratios in all hospitals “to the same level as Group A city hospital”, most of them in metropolitan areas. Ms Lye said activity-based funding was impacting nursing hours in country hospitals. “It has been an ongoing battle and nurses out here in regional areas...need the right ratios to look after our patients safely,” she said.
The branch secretary has called on Dubbo MP Troy Grant to “push for this ratio of one to four”.
