Nursing our sick system
EXPERT PANEL CALLS FOR MORE STAFF IN AGED CARE
INCREASING the Medicare levy and uncapping the number of elderly Australians able to receive care in their own homes are just two of the solutions offered by our Aged Care 360 panel.
An urgent review of nurse-to-resident ratios also needs to be addressed to ensure that vulnerable residents are given adequate levels of care, and the low rates of pay for staff also needs to be fixed.
News Corp Australia this week launched Aged Care 360, bringing together a panel of experts and those affected first-hand by the crisis in our aged care sector.
Panel members included Monash University’s Head of Health Law and Ageing Research Unit Professor Joseph Ibrahim, federal secretary of the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation Annie Butler and Jason Ward from the Centre for International Corporate Tax and Accountability Research.
It also includes Anthony Bowe, whose mother Patricia Shea almost died after contracting COVID-19 as a resident of Newmarch House in western Sydney.
Aged Services Minister Richard Colbeck was the only guest to decline an invitation to take part.
Panel member and opposition spokeswoman on aged care Julie Collins said minimum staffing ratio levels had to be introduced in aged care and staff should be required to have proper qualifications before being hired.
“The fact that we’ve got some facilities in Australia where you’ve got only one nurse on all night for 150 residents is not the community expectation,” Ms Collins said.
Personal care workers make up 80 per cent of the aged care workforce but they aren’t registered with any professional body and get just six weeks training — if any at all.
In some financially successful aged care homes, residents get just 2.95 hours of care a day. Most homes provide just 3.2 hours of care. International best practice is 4.3 hours.
Annie Butler said poor pay rates made it hard to attract workers to aged care, where most are paid up to 19 per cent less than if they worked in a public hospital.
She told the Aged Care 360 panel that workers in Bunnings were paid more per hour than personal care workers.
“Most of our members stay in the sector for the love of the job, for the love of the residents. Many tell use they could earn more in Woolworths,” she said.
An aged care nurse who wished to remain anonymous told News Corp that in the aged care home where she worked there was just one assistant in nursing in charge of 40 high-needs residents at night.
The only other worker was a registered nurse who was in charge of 100 highneeds residents.
She recounted how one night three elderly patients were in desperate need of attention but she couldn’t attend to two of them.
“I was over the other side with a lady who couldn’t breathe and wanted oxygen,” she said.
The Health Services Union — which represents the bulk of aged care workers — wants the Medicare levy raised from 2 per cent to 2.65 per cent to provide a $20bn funding injection into the sector. Currently, 30,000 people a year die waiting for these home care services, while others end up in nursing homes because of government funding caps.
“We must now build the aged care system that our elderly deserve. Care homes desperately need more staff with greater training and higher pay,” HSU president Gerard Hayes said. “For too long the system has relied on the goodwill of a casualised and underpaid workforce.”
Aged Care 360 panel member Sean Rooney from Leading Aged Services Australia said the government must remove the caps on funding for provided aged care to residents in their own homes.