It is plain business sense that if you have a staff shortage you look at two areas. The training/retention of current staff and recruitment. We need to address both of these areas urgently. If staff are not available to cover shifts they have to be taken from other areas. That means other procedures etc get cancelled adding to waiting lists and bed block.
It is time the govt. took their head out of the sand and addressed the critical shortage of nurses and health professionals. There are numerous steps we can take to fix the issues at the CBH and we will continue to roll these out as we develop them with stakeholders and those with the expertise to address the issues.
Even whilst discussing these issues after the press conference my Barron River counterpart, Brendan Fitzgerald, and I were able to develop further strategies we intend to expand once we have consulted stakeholders to ensure it's viability. It also helps to have a local doctor on your team to provide professional and firsthand advice as we can with our Mulgrave counterpart Dr Damien Byrnes.
No doubt the other parties will come up with 50 reasons why this can't happen (because they didn't think of it even though they're supposed to be the workers party) or it's too hard etc so they don't have to do something. We'd rather come up with 50 ways to make this happen because it is the right thing to do. It is the smart thing to do. It is what we need to do.
Here is the media release put out today by us today.
Nursing shortages becoming critical at CBH
The Australian Party Candidate for Cairns Darren Hunt has called on the Health Minister to look at alternative strategies to attract and retain trained staff.
Mr Hunt said “The Cairns Base Hospital is scrambling on a daily basis to find nursing staff to fill shifts. The shortages mean that nurses are being taken away from other areas to fill ward duties which is resulting in waiting lists growing as appointments, procedures and operations have to be cancelled. Bed block increases, Ambulance ramping increases and there is enormous stress and pressure placed on front line staff forced to deal with irate patients and working extra shifts to cover shortages.”
“Overseas recruiting is not meeting the demand. We have highly skilled and trained nurses right here in Cairns and FNQ that don’t return to the workforce because it is not viable due to child care costs and issues. I was shocked to learn job sharing type arrangements are not promoted for nurses as occurs in other agencies like the police service. Nurses have told me if there was a job-share arrangement they would be more likely to return to work on a part-time basis to maintain their skills.”
“We have to go one step further. We need child care facilities for staff at the hospital that do want to return. The news that child care costs could rise by a further $100 per week, per child means it is even less likely for these highly trained staff to return as they could end up paying more money in child care than they earn. We need to make the most of the resources we have in our own backyard and it is time to think outside the square.”
“Our nursing shortages need to be addressed urgently. We need to look at increasing the number of places under the Rural Scholarship scheme and the allowances payable to determine if they are sufficient to attract staff. This could attract more people to the profession and get more nurses into rural and regional Australia.”
“The cost would be offset by the saving in overtime and burnout of current staff. Waiting lists would be reduced as nurses are not being taken from other duties to cover ward shifts caused by staff shortages”
“The people of Cairns are sick of the other parties arguing amongst themselves over who is to blame, instead of addressing issues. The people of Cairns don’t care whose fault it is as much as they want solutions and that’s what the Australian Party has to offer.”
Darren Hunt
Candidate for Cairns
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