Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Get behind our Victorian nurses!

I was going to waffle on about the hiccup we had yesterday with Feral Aspie - bullying at school, didn't speak to the teacher, couldn't go swimming due to the chopping of the ingrown toe nail, so the anger boiled up and over and boy, did we get splashed with the fall out.
I digress.

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So, I've had a bug up my backside since the news broke that the Vic State Govt wants to not only increase nurses workload but that they seem to think PCAs can fill in and do the same job.
Plus increase the nurse : patient ratio that is currently 1 nurse to 4 patients
Because nurses need to increase their productivity.
So they reckon.
Ahuh.

Let's put this in basic terms...so basic that possibly even the dimwits in parliament may understand.
IF they ever actually think.
  • We have a growing population.
  • We need to keep pace with that growing population with all types of infrastructure that make up civilisation.
  • We need to increase the hospitals, hospital services and hospital staff to address the increasing needs of that growing population.
  • We need to INCREASE the pay of nurses to reflect the hard slog they do shift in, shift out, every week, keeping people alive, mending, healthy and well.
  • We need to DECREASE their workload because they are the frontline in the defence of people's health, they are the ones who detect any abnormalities, any changes, any complications; they need to have less stress and workload to NOT miss vital clues to a patients state of health.
  • In this day and age while there is an economic crisis everywhere you look but bigwigs keep awarding themselves pay rises for polishing chairs in the board room, it is indecent that nurses have to keep busting their balls (and many nurses, even females, have bloody big balls) to beg for the workplace ratios and pay to not only retain their workforce but to keep us general public alive in their care.

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2 comments:

River said...

Now print this out about a million times and send it to all members of parliament, and follow up with emails. Then challenge them to "be a nurse" for a day and see how much "productivity" they can manage. Without accidentally killing any patients.
How dare they suggest nurses should look after MORE patients!!

Eccentricess said...

*agrees*
Nurse are awesome and one other thing they all seem to have in common is a look of exhaustion. Our society should have far more respect and give better work conditions to these amazing people.

I am always amazed by people who can be around blood and other icky things, too. ;-)