Paid parental leave scheme – submit your experience

The Federal Government is conducting a review of their Paid Parental Leave Scheme and inviting submissions up until May 31. Read on for details.

Everyone knows that nursing is an ageing workforce – and a predominantly female workforce. Though the percentage of male nurses and midwives is crawling up year-on-year, it still sits at only 9.9 percent (up from 9.6 percent in 2007).

The age profile of nurses and midwives has shifted towards older age groups in the past decade. The average age is now 44.5 years, up from 43.7 in 2007.

What’s also significant is the big hole in the middle of the demographic, in the 30-34 year olds.

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Posted in: Employment issues, Re-entry
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Decking your desks for ratios

We asked NSWNMA branches across the state to show their support for the Ratios put patient safety first campaign by decorating their ‘desk’ – or workspace – with  streamers, badges, small posters and balloons. We want to improve and extend mandated nurse-to-patient ratios under the new Public Health System Award (up for negotiation now) – especially for nurses in the Bush, in Emergency, community and NICUs.

To date, we have well over 100 photos of decked-out desks from all over NSW. Here are just a few, but there are many more fantastic photos which can be viewed here.

Broken Hill surgical unit asks: What about us?

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Posted in: NSWNMA, One2Four Campaign, Ratios, Unions
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Ciara’s film wins first prize

Ciara Rafferty’s film Arthur…? won first prize last Thursday night at the NSWNMA’s fourth Nurses & Midwives Short Film Festival. Ciara won $5000, sponsored by First State Super.

Ciara (below after winning) is a student nurse at the University of Tasmania’s Darlinghurst campus, where her film was made.

View Arthur…? below – watch out for the twist in the tale!

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Posted in: Events, Film festival, Nursing students, Videos
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Free trade is not fair!

A guest post about the implications  for the price of medications under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme of current Free Trade Agreement negotiations – by Michael Whaites, an organiser with the NSWNMA.

A Free Trade Agreement (FTA) is currently being negotiated between Australia, USA and a number of Asia/Pacific countries (the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement – TPPA). The negotiations are being held in secret and the desired outcome is that corporations will have greater access to Australian markets. One of the problems with this is that our Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) is seen as a barrier to Free Trade.

Without the PBS, costs for medications in Australia would fall into line with costs in the US and that’s three to 10 times the price we currently pay. This would mean less people being able to afford their medications and more people filling our public hospitals.

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Posted in: Community campaigns, Health funding, International, NSWNMA
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A student nurse’s poem – ‘Nursing the Nation’

In an extraordinary appearance at the Royal College of Nursing Congress in Liverpool (England), 24 year old student nurse Molly Case, who is a performance poet, young adult novelist and blogger, spoke her beautiful and passionate poem ‘Nursing the Nation’, which she wrote in response to recent criticism of nurses in the NHS and their alleged ‘lack of care’.

Here’s an excerpt from the transcript of the poem but really the best way to hear it is to view Molly on the YouTube video below – which has already been viewed by over 206,000 people! Now the campaign is on to get a million people to view the poem before this Sunday’s International Nurses Day. So let’s share it around.

Who’d have thought we’d be having to defend?
We don’t do this for our families, we don’t do this for our friends,
but for strangers.
Because this is our vocation
and we’re sick and tired of hearing we don’t do enough for this nation.
So, listen to us, hear us goddamn roar, you say we’re not doing enough?
Then we promise we’ll do more.
This time, next time, there’s nothing we can’t handle,
even if you bring us down, show us scandal, scandal, scandal.

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Posted in: Advocacy, International, Nurses - image and identity, Videos
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