Dear community,
As you are aware, members of the NSWNMA have participated in industrial action in February and March. This action was necessary as the current NSW Government refuses to acknowledge our current health care crisis and continues to say that “nurses are coping”.
I would like you to know that as the clinicians entrusted to advocate for your safe care, we are not coping and enough is enough. The NSW Government continues to demoralise us as health professionals by ignoring our concerns and they are failing our communities.
Every single day and night we are working with dangerously low staffing levels. During the pandemic the expectations and workloads were increased and the nurses have been holding the system together but it is starting to crumble underneath us. Senior, highly skilled Registered Nurses are leaving due to inflexibility of the health service.
We are experiencing burnout or moral injury, because we cannot give the care our patients need and deserve. If the NSW Government does not listen to us and implement safe nurse-to-patient ratios there will be no health service left in the bush.
Why are we not all complaining together about the fact that there are more crew members filling potholes on the roads than there are nurses at the local hospital, saving lives? If the community continues to think this is acceptable, the system will never change.
We ask you to please rally with your community to support our safe staffing ratios claim so that we can give YOU and your family the care you rightly deserve in your public hospital. We encourage you to get in contact with local MP’s and write them letters to encourage them to fight for safe staffing alongside us.
We are calling for the NSW Government to give us a wage that reflects our skills, knowledge and experience. Ratios will give us safe working conditions that will ensure better patient outcomes and safer care. It will also improve staff retention and protect our mental and physical health.
We did not ask for a bonus which goes back to the Government through tax. We need guaranteed numbers of nurses on the ground and we need them now!
Samantha Gregory-Jones
(Canowindra Delegate)