Illawarra nurses will join thousands of their colleagues in Sydney on Tuesday in a mass strike for the first time in almost a decade amid a dispute over hospital staffing levels, pay and working conditions.
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Wollongong and Shellharbour nurses were among the 99 per cent of the NSW Nurses and Midwives' Association (NSWNMA) branches in favour of strike action and called on the NSW Premier to urgently implement shift by shift nursing and midwifery staffing for safe patient care.
Genevieve Stone, secretary of NSWNMA Wollongong Hospital branch, said the situation was dire for "exhausted and frustrated" nurses.
"We were drowning before the pandemic and the pandemic has been basically a tsunami for us," she said.
"The issues that we have is staff shortfalls every day, constant requests to come in, overtime and coming in on our days off, and having our leave either cancelled or denied.
We were drowning before the pandemic and the pandemic has been basically a tsunami for us.
- Genevieve Stone, secretary of NSWNMA Wollongong Hospital branch
"We've got unrealistic patient loads. We've got staff leaving or retiring and astronomical ED waiting times for the public."
Miss Stone said some members of the public last week had to wait 12 hours to see a doctor.
"We've got doctor shortages and nurses working as close contacts. We are working in PPE all day, unable to have time to drink water or use the bathroom," she said.
"We've got management working on the floor to try and cover shifts.
"We've got fear of catching COVID, massive fatigue and burnout, and fear that things are only going to get worse."
Wollongong Hospital, among the hospitals which have borne the brunt of the state's Delta and Omicron waves, will be hit hard, with nurses voting to strike for up to 12 hours on Tuesday, February 15.
Skeleton staff will remain during the strike for urgent care, to treat critically unwell patients and preserve life.
Frustrated nurses say mandated nurse-to-patient ratios for each shift, similar to those in place in Queensland and Victoria, are needed to ensure patient safety. They are also calling for a pay rise above 2.5 per cent to recognise the additional burden placed on the workforce during the pandemic.
NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet recently said he wanted "reasonable, robust discussions to get outcomes, not be in a situation where we see strikes over the course of 2022. As a government we are here to listen to those concerns, we're here to work through those concerns, whether that's in health, in education, in transport."
But Miss Stone said successive governments have knocked back introducing nurse-to-patient ratios. "This is not new, we've been demanding nurse-to-patient ratios for almost a decade. The premier says he wants to talk out issues but our requests have fallen on deaf ears," she said.
The NSW union, which represents more than 48,000 nurses and midwives working in public hospitals, wants one nurse to four patients on the ward and one nurse to three patients in ED.
NSW Health defended current staffing ratios, saying a flexible approach allowed for better care.
A spokesperson said the nursing workforce had increased by almost 10,000 in the last decade, with the government also "investing in a further 5000 nurses and midwives from 2019-2022 under a record $2.8 billion boost to frontline staff".
This was "too little, too late" for Miss Stone.
"If we had gotten those ratios before the pandemic, there would be more nurses in the health system and we wouldn't be in the trouble we are now," she said.
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