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!
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.
Over 775 FTE nurse positions have been lost in Queensland in the past year, plus 3540 positions in Queensland Health. Beth Mohle, secretary of the Queensland Nurses’ Union, spoke to Noel Hester of The Lamp in March about the dire situation of drastic health cuts and privatisations facing nurses and the community in her state.
Below, watch excerpts from the video interview with Beth and then read the article as it appears in May’s Lamp.
The recent vote to endorse the NSWNMA’s draft log of claims for the 2013 Public Health System award was overwhelmingly in favour – 214 branches voted yes.
While the vote was underway, our intrepid film-maker was out and about capturing the views of members who had turned up to vote.
Watch the video below to hear from special care nursery, emergency, operating theatre, community and general ward nurses and midwives about the positive difference that ratios would make in their working day.
Sharny Fleming EN Goulburn Base Hospital.
Blue Mountains artist Birgitte Hansen has created a wonderful mural which shows the history of nurses and midwives in union activism in NSW. The patchwork artwork was recently hung on a wall of the Waterloo offices of the NSWNMA.
Commissioned by the Association last year and measuring 1.5 by 3 metres, the mural is a mixture of old photographs and hand-done paintings based on historic photos. There are 56 separate pictures in the mural (plus the Association’s logo), most in colour but some in black and white.
Looking at the mural is an intriguing experience, as your eyes find more and more detail to look at – it’s impossible to take it all in at once. Return viewings are a richly rewarding experience.
Click on the photo for a larger, inclusive view.
