In their first move towards improving wait times at the state's struggling emergency departments, Premier Chris Minns and Health Minister Ryan Park have established an expert group to oversee the roll-out of Labor's new hospital staffing model.
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The group includes Woonona nurse and General Secretary of the nurses union Shaye Candish and will first meet early next month, reporting back to NSW Health on the rollout of the new staff ratio system.
Before the election, Mr Park told local nurses that getting more staff into hospital wards, starting with EDs, would be his first priority as health minister.
"It's so bad at the moment, so that has to be a laser-like focus for me," Mr Park said before the poll.
Just over three weeks into the job, he has announced the new Safe Staffing Working Group, which brings together health bureaucrats and NSW Nurses and Midwives Association leaders.
"I have great confidence in this group and the expertise it will bring to implementing safe staffing levels in our hospitals," he said.
"It won't be easy to undo a decade of rising wait times and understaffing, but this government is determined to begin to turn things around."
Waiting times for Wollongong Hospital reached record highs in 2022, with ED patients waiting longer than almost anywhere else in NSW to be treated or admitted according to the most recent Bureau of Health Information data.
During a visit with the Premier to the hospital last Friday, Mr Park said investment in better staffing was vital to fix this.
So-called "Safe Staffing" will replace the government's more than decade-old Nursing Hours Per Patient Day staffing model, which came in during the previous Labor government.
For years, nurses and midwives had been lobbying the Coalition for a change to this model, as they said it repeatedly led to some wards and shifts going understaffed.
Over the past 18 months, Illawarra nurses have walked off the job several times, holding rallies and marches across the region as staffing pressures increased.
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Labor's promised model stops short of what the union asked for in the lead up to the election, but will put minimum and enforceable staffing levels into the Public Health System Nurses' and Midwives' (State) Award.
The working group will plan and drive this change across the public hospital system starting with emergency departments, the government said.
The staffing levels will then be introduced in other departments, like intensive care units and maternity wards, with the roll-out informed by the advice group.
Announcing the working group, Mr Minns said he was committed to looking after nurses who looked after the people of the state during the pandemic.
"When I visit hospitals and EDs the issue I hear about most often is experienced nurses and midwives leaving because they are overworked and under-resourced," he said.
"This is the first step to Safe Staffing in hospitals - ensuring there's one in three nurses in ED. It was one of the very first election commitments we made."
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Kate McIlwain
For more than a decade, I've helped the Illawarra Mercury set the news agenda across the region. Currently I'm the paper's health reporter - covering the stories of Illawarra workers and residents in the wake of a global pandemic and at a time where our health systems are stretched to the limit.
For more than a decade, I've helped the Illawarra Mercury set the news agenda across the region. Currently I'm the paper's health reporter - covering the stories of Illawarra workers and residents in the wake of a global pandemic and at a time where our health systems are stretched to the limit.
