Governments must act on nursing shortages now!

Posted on May 7, 2012 by NU_admin

“As a matter of urgency, Australia has to now start rebuilding a future nursing workforce to replace current nursing staff who will be retiring over the next 15 to 20 years.”

A new report by Health Workforce Australia showing a shortage of nearly 110,000 nurses by 2025 demonstrates why all Governments must urgently invest in the nursing workforce, according to the Australian Nursing Federation (ANF).

ANF Assistant Federal Secretary Yvonne Chaperon said both State and Federal Governments must act to provide better wages, training and education and career pathways to ensure the recruitment and then retention of Australia’s nursing and midwifery workforce.

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Posted in: Nursing - Aged Care
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International midwives

Posted on May 4, 2012 by NU_admin

Tomorrow, Saturday 5 May, is International Midwives Day - check out the Virtual International Midwives Day site where you can join an international conversation on the day! 

IMD precedes International Nurses Day by a week. But it will be on Sunday May 20 that Australian midwife Bernadette Lack runs the Great Ocean Road Marathon in Victoria in order to raise funds to train midwives in Ethiopia, so as to increase the care for women suffering from obstetric fistula.

Bernadette is based in Central Australia, often working with women in remote indigenous communities. Here she is surrounded by flies, training in the early morning of a hot day:

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Posted in: Advocacy, International, Nursing - Midwifery
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Nurse recruitment via YouTube

Posted on May 3, 2012 by NU_admin

Tamworth Hospital in northwest rural NSW is using YouTube, among other media, to advertise for nurses in their Critical Care team (including Emergency, Intensive Care and retrieval teams), as well as in theatres, maternity and orthopaedics. This follows pressure from NSWNA members in Tamworth, via a ‘reasonable workloads’ dispute process, for the local health management to start recruiting more nurses, via every possible avenue, including YouTube.

Management agreed to advertise in major newspapers such as The Australian and the Sydney Morning Herald – these ads include links to the YouTube ad, which promotes the ‘work, life and balance’ (not to mention ‘affordable housing’) to be found in Tamworth. Backing music is by a local doctor.

 

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Posted in: Employment issues, Future of nursing, Nursing online, Videos
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Surfing the ward

Posted on May 2, 2012 by NU_admin

Here’s a vivid account by a man in the US who’s training to be a ‘nurse’s aide’ about how nursing reminds him of surfing! What he’s getting at is that when he’s at work, ideally he is taken out of himself – he is just ‘in the moment’. It’s busy, yes, but also exhilarating, challenging and rewarding. Not thinking about himself, but taken out of himself and thinking only of his patients (though that ratio of one nurse to 16 patients is risky.)

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Posted in: Just For Fun, Nursing experiences
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A future of nursing shortages

Posted on May 1, 2012 by NU_admin

Australia faces a shortage of the equivalent of 27 percent of the entire nursing workforce within 13 short years, according to a new Health Workforce 2025 report. Current staff shortages, let alone the prospect of increasing staff shortages, will come as no surprise to staff themselves, as pointed out by Martin Laverty of Catholic Health, but hopefully will act as some kind of wake-up call to ‘consumers’ and governments across the board.

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Posted in: Future of nursing
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