Remember our older Australians and nurses in aged care
Published: 6 June 2011
Our celebrations on International Day of the Midwife, International Nurses Day and Labour Day reminded me again of something very important: nurses and midwives are inherently collectively-oriented.
We understand that our common interests and shared objectives are best advanced by working together there is strength in numbers.
These days, our industrial and professional interests and hence our objectives are becoming increasingly and inextricably linked.
This was exemplified in our theme for Labour Day this year Remember our Older Australians quality aged care needs nursing.
The theme reinforces our national Because We Care campaign objectives for aged care:
- The right mix of skills and nursing hours
- Wages comparable with public sector nurses
- More funding tied to wages and staffing
- A focus on quality care through appropriate regulation.
These objectives blend core industrial and professional issues.
For example, unless the stark wage differential is addressed, the right mix and numbers of nurses cannot be attracted to work in aged care to provide quality nursing.
Unless more funding can be tied to wages and staffing, the wage differential cannot be addressed yet more funding cannot be tied to wages and staffing without appropriate regulation.
With the Productivity Commission finalising its Caring for Older Australians inquiry and reporting to the federal government by mid-year, it is essential that we stress our case for ensuring that older Australians receive the nursing they need.
The first step in this process is to have the value of nursing acknowledged, and this starts with all of us, as individuals and as a collective, mounting the case for nursing.
We cannot assume that politicians, health and aged care bureaucrats and other key decision makers and stakeholders intuitively understand what nursing is and why it is important.
There are competing interests and values at play, and we must not assume ours are uncontested.
We must take every opportunity to press our arguments.
Each time we make our case we have an opportunity to convince someone who has not heard our particular point of view before.
Making the argument with real life examples our nursing stories is a very powerful thing indeed.
We have natural allies in this struggle those to whom we provide nursing and midwifery care.
A genuine partnership with the community is required to ensure that our common interests are met.
This means using different strategies to engage in ongoing two-way communication to ensure that nursing and midwifery remains relevant to changing community needs and expectations.
Greater emphasis must also be placed on nursing and midwifery research so we can provide clear evidence of the difference that we make to achieving high quality health outcomes.
The critical issues for aged care appropriate skill mix, safe workloads, robust regulation of both service providers and caregivers, wages paid to the aged care workforce, and accountability for taxpayer-provided funding are all inextricably linked.
This means they can also become unnecessarily complicated.
Our job is to strip all these elements back to explain the difference that nurses and nursing makes, and how we play an integral role in establishing a sustainable and high quality aged care system.
This is not a battle for aged care nurses alone. No matter what sector we work in we must all advocate strongly to keep nursing in aged care.
Older Australians deserve our individual and collective efforts to achieve this.
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