 29 July 2008
Australia’s elderly at risk without qualified nurses in aged care
The Australian Nursing Federation (ANF) is again calling on the federal government to urgently make a commitment to solving the care crisis for Australia’s elderly by ensuring minimum staffing levels, closing the wages gap for nurses, and ensuring the licensing of all aged care workers.
Responding to the latest crisis at the Kirralee Residential Aged Care Facility in Victoria, ANF federal secretary Ged Kearney said there was no doubt that the failure of the previous federal government to ensure adequate staffing levels and skills mix in aged care had placed patients at serious risk.
“The new federal government has an opportunity to end this crisis and ensure the highest quality of care for all Australians in residential aged care.”
Ms Kearney said for the Minister for Ageing Justine Elliot to achieve her promise to place the safety, health and welfare of residents first the government must introduce minimum staffing levels in aged care facilities. Registered and enrolled nurses along with other nursing care staff cannot provide quality care if they are continually short staffed.
The ANF believes that Australia’s nurses working in aged care are at breaking point because of impossible workloads and a lack of support, there is no incentive for them to stay in an industry which continually offers chronically poor pay and conditions.
“Those nurses still working in aged care are paid, on average, $250 per week less then their colleagues in other areas. They can earn up to $20,000 less per annum. When will the federal government start putting mechanisms in place to ensure funding reaches the nurses, giving Australia’s elderly a better chance of receiving quality residential care?’”
The ANF says another mechanism for ensuring quality care in nursing homes is the licensing of aged care workers.
“All nursing care staff should be licensed,” Ms Kearney said, “Licensing of nurses, doctors and other health professionals is undertaken for a very good reason – to protect the public.”
“There are 280,000 nurses in Australia, making up well over 50% of the health care workforce. Nurses know health care and they understand aged care. It would be a tragedy if the people most suited to delivering high quality care to Australia’s vulnerable aging population.
 27 July 2008
Nurses to target inadequate remote housing as part of closing the indigenous life expectancy gap
The Queensland Nurses Union (QNU) will target, over the next two years, inadequate housing and facilities for remote area nurses and other health workers as part of the wider health campaign to close the life expectancy gap between indigenous and other Australians.
The remote housing campaign follows the QNU’s successful campaign earlier this year to improve the safety and quality of nurse housing and healthcare workplaces in the Torres Strait.
A number of resolutions calling for action on the issue were also passed at the QNU’s 27th annual conference in Brisbane earlier this month.
QNU assistant secretary, Beth Mohle, said nurses are very concerned about the quality of nurse housing and health facilities in many rural and remote areas and they believe it is time something decisive was done about it.
“The Queensland auditor-general has also identified it as a serious issue in a 2008 report on public sector housing. Queensland Health has also done a review of its housing stock this year and developed a maintenance action plan.
“Nurses, as key primary healthcare providers in most rural and remote communities, know that housing and facilities, for both indigenous residents and non-indigenous service staff, need to be improved if we are to address the health outcomes gap between indigenous and other Australians.
“In fact, improving the personal and working lives of nurses in these areas is a vital step in addressing the issue. It is obviously not the only step, but a key step nonetheless.
“Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) figures show that between 2000 and 2004 70 per cent of indigenous deaths were of people aged between 0 and 64 years of age, compared with 21 per cent for the entire Australian population. Indigenous death rates in the 0-24; 25-44 and 45-64 age groups were all more than double the rate for the entire Australian population.
“According to the AIHW the following life expectancy gaps exist between indigenous Australians and the Australian population taken as a whole:
“Another disturbing situation is the greater extent, in all age groups, to which indigenous people experience some form of core activity limitation. As the following AIHW graph shows, the rate is significantly higher amongst indigenous people (in each case indigenous is the higher bar):
“These are complex issues, but making it easier for health professionals such as nurses to live and work in rural and remote communities will help deal with them. That is why the QNU will be giving the issue a higher profile in the next couple of years,” Ms Mohle said.
| 
