The Queensland Nurse Editorial 3 - October 2005

The nursing shortage
Nurses are worth listening to — don’t  waste this opportunity, Mr Beattie.

As this journal goes to print the Premier is in the United Kingdom launching a recruitment drive for doctors, nurses, midwives and other health professionals who are in short supply in Queensland.

Queensland Health, he says, will pay relocation expenses which includes airfaires.

The Premier is also offering attractive salary packaging, remote area allowances, study leave and flexible leave arrangements which allows the recruits to travel around the country.

We have always welcomed nurses from overseas countries, and we will do so again when UK and Irish nurses come to swell the ranks. Some of us will go and replace them.

However, we are managing crisis situations in a number of areas across Queensland as I write this.
Mental health nurses in the metropolitan area are in very short supply.

Oncology services on the Gold Coast have been curtailed because of a shortage of suitably qualified oncology nurses.

“Emergency departments are suffering serious shortages of nursing staff.”
Senior nurses right across the state advise that the situation is critical. There is no supply of nurses to fill the gaps.
Nurses are committed to rebuilding the health service in Queensland and their message to the Premier is—do not ignore those of us who have worked in this system for years, who have always gone the extra mile when needed, who live and raise our families in Queensland and contribute every day to the well-being and health of Queensland and to the Queensland economy.

With the negotiations for EB6 now under way and the Forster Review recommendations due shortly, we have a unique opportunity to make nursing a career that young people want to enter, and a unique opportunity to make Queensland Health the employer of choice for nurses.

The new Director-General for Health, Uschi Schreiber, has written to me assuring us that an appropriate consultation process will be put in place with senior officers of Queensland Health to ensure true partnership is embraced as part of the reforming of Queensland Health.

Ms Schreiber also advises that the government is committed to improving the working conditions of nurses in relation to attraction and retention issues, enhanced functions and roles and workload issues.

I have also had similar assurances from the Premier and the Minister for Industrial Relations.