ON EDGE NURSES SET TO STRIKE
“Ihate to say it but I would dread having a loved one or myself come to this hospital because depending on the day and the staffing, they may not get the care they should be getting because there’s not enough staff.”
It’s comments like these from the people on the frontline of Tasmania’s health system that are sounding alarm bells that nurses have had enough. On Tuesday the nurses union released comments from a recent survey of members and the message was clear.
They are at breaking point. “We are stretched beyond our means. We are tired … exhausted. We are working many hours, often without a break … we all keep going because we care, because we made an oath to the patients we care for.
“Show some compassion and start caring for us. The burnout is massive,” was another of many comments highlighting the issue in Tassie hospitals right now.
The cynical in the community, as the union goes into bat for nurses wanting more pay, might say this is just a ploy designed at putting pressure on the state government.
But this is the message many journalists in the Hobart Mercury newsroom have been hearing from nurses for a number of months.
Despite offers to talk about the issue the nurses fear speaking out to the media may end up with them losing their jobs.
But that fear has now bubbled over into anger with fed-up nurses taking a stand with a strike at the Royal Hobart Hospital. And that’s despite a lastminute bid by the government to stop the action. Premier and Health Minister Jeremy Rockliff offered on Tuesday to start talks over new pay and conditions early – but only if nurses didn’t walk off the job and stopped all industrial action.
“Our government is prepared to commence negotiations now for a new agreement as a commitment to work through, in good faith, the issues the ANMF have been raising, and to demonstrate that we are taking these issues seriously,” he said.
It seems it was too little too late with ANMF Tasmanian branch secretary Emily Shepherd saying the union’s executive considered then rejected the offer.
“Our members’ view is that we need to the government actually needs to act on addressing members’ workload concerns now and putting in additional resources to fix that and actually comply with the existing enterprise agreement,” she said.
It’s going to be an interesting few days for the government. They have multiple fire fronts at the moment but this is probably one of the more important issues to extinguish.