HEALTH ONCE AGAIN ON THE AGENDA
WHEN parliament resumes after its winter recess next week, the government can expect to be under pressure on the key issue of health – a running sore that has plagued it since gaining power almost a decade ago.
Premier Jeremy Rockliff, who chose to retain the health portfolio when taking over as leader, has hardly had a relaxing break. He has had to deal with the sudden departure of yet another minister in Jacquie Petrusma and work to broker a peace deal with an increasingly unhappy nursing workforce.
In many ways, it’s a case of the proverbial chickens coming home to roost.
When the Liberals swept to power in 2014, they immediately froze public sector wages – including their own – in a necessary attempt to bring the state budget under control. It also cut the number of public sector workers, largely by not replacing retiring staff.
Gradually over time, the government has loosened the purse strings and worked on recruiting more staff – restoring the number of teachers, nurses, police and paramedics.
Whenever there is a crisis within the health sector, government ministers are quick to point out that there has been “record spending” in hospitals and that there are aggressive recruitment programs in place to attract more workers to the state.
Of course part of the reason there is “record spending” is that costs over time always go up and you have to spend more to maintain the status quo.
Recruitment these days is easier said than done. After a steep rise in house prices, the natural cost-of-living advantages, once used to justify lower wages in the state, no longer stack up. It has been a real struggle to attract and retain medical staff.
One of the key points made by nurses in their dispute with the government centres on lower pay, compared with interstate colleagues, and a workforce so stretched that too many are forced to work too many hours just to keep the place running.
Some areas have used unpaid trainees to prop up the system, as exposed by midwife and registered nurse Amanda Duncan in Monday’s paper.
She detailed how midwifery trainees – most of whom are registered nurses training to upgrade their skills – don’t get paid for their first year of practical experience in hospitals, which is a key requirement of their university course. Not only that, but they are expected to be on call 24/7 and don’t get sick or annual leave. Because hospital obstetric units are so understaffed, Ms Duncan said first-year trainees were being “used and abused” to fill staffing gaps.
Other careers involve unpaid experience, such as medical students and trainee lawyers. But it would be negligent to use those unpaid trainees to fill paid shifts.
Clearly the system of training midwives needs to change.
If hospital administrators are using trainees to paper over staff shortages, the government must do better and offer more to recruit and keep new workers.