The New South Wales Nurses’ Association have been running a series of television advertisements recently highlighting the upcoming Federal Elections and the fact that Julia Gilliard’s government has significantly increased funding for nurses. This is the first of two ads.
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NSWNA needs to show statisitics on how much time in minutes the average RN is forced into spending with each patient in his/her care on a shift.Then show what the politicians have said regarding health funding in this campaign. Clearly Abbott would only like to throw the promise of money at aged care & mental health and let the fundamental system go to pot because of his love of private health care. Show what a user pay system of health (like USA) looks like and how if the entire health care system (not just two areas) isn’t funded adequately then a coalition government would let it either decay further or shift back to a user pay system because they can profit from it and take absolutely no responsibility for it into the bargain. E.G compare Abbott’s ideas about health care reform to Richard Nixon’s secret scheming to force Americans into HMO based health care. Just an idea. We cannot risk looking like a political cliche to the public.
Often, the Public are fooled into believing a Policy announcement, that says something like: X dollars into the ABC hospital.
It takes more than a building to have a workable Health Care System.
You NEED Nurses to staff the new / promised wards.
That goes for Aged Care as well.
No good saying millions to be invested into the Aged Care Sector, when the Nurses ‘ on the floor ‘ are still struggling with maximal resident-to-staff ratios.
Give Aged Care Nurses a funding boost, don’t just buy a new nursing home !!
regards,
I completely agree, we need to keep nursing numbers up to keep patients safe and provide the level of care that we would expect as a patient ourselves. However, we also need to take some responsibility as clinicians and health care professionals that we are providing cost-effective, timely and evidence-based care. Luckily, this is slowly happening now but it will be a difficult process at times but we need to support it. We need to stop thinking about ‘our ward’ or ‘our hospital’ and look at the bigger picture about what is best for the patient and the health care budget, not just whats better for us. If this means cutting non-essential services or having to travel further for elective surgery, then so be it, but if it means ‘best care’ and getting the hospitals back into the black then we will all be better off for it. And then . . . we will be able to pay for more nurses!!!
We have just been hit by the effects of the “Cahill report.” The net effect of this is that a lot of our support infrastructure was scaled right back, with an expectation that nurses would take over those roles. The fundamental crux of the “Garling enquiry” was to get nurses back to THE BEDSIDE and put the focus back on patients. So I have to ask, then, why am I either answering the phone (up to 90 calls on some shifts) or letting the phone ring out because I just can’t answer it and do my job at the same time??? The focus on patients has to be seen to be genuine……….and so I watch with a mixture of anticipation and dread the next election results. Our poor country facilities are starved of funds!!!
I agree with you amanda63. I dispute that we have many non-essential services. I ask what they might be? I do not believe we ,as nurses,waste anything. We have had our supplies and services cut to the bone by incompetent bean counters who couldn’t manage their own bank accounts much less healthcare budgets.
I agree that we are starved of funds and we nurses cannot change that other than to highlight the inequity. I do not beleive patients should have to wait longer or travel even further for surgery. That kind of compromise will lead to even more harsh economic rationalising that our decaying system cannot withstand. With our rate of immigration and rewarding citizens to keep pumping out more children the system is in dire need of reform.