Sydney nurses postpone Wednesday strike over Northern Beaches Hospital
BREAKING: Nurses and midwives have decided they won’t be conducting a strike on Wednesday after initially agreeing to do so over job concerns at the new Northern Beaches Hospital.
Manly
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NURSES and midwives have decided they won’t be conducting a strike on Wednesday after initially agreeing to do so over job concerns at the new Northern Beaches Hospital.
The dispute centres on the new roles and conditions for nurses from the public hospitals when they transfer to the privately-run Northern Beaches Hospital in October.
The NSW Nurses and Midwives Association, the Northern Sydney Local Health District and Healthscope, the company that will run the combined public and private facility, were locked in talks on Tuesday afternoon before coming to a decision.
Instead, nurses and midwives will hold a rally outside Manly Hospital, from 1pm, during their work break.
Strike action is postponed until further notice.
Nurses had initially voted to strike unless Healthscope revealed details of their roles and conditions at the new hospital.
As part of a transfer process and the assigning of jobs, some of the 1200 nursing staff said they were being given roles they have no expertise in.
Others said they had been excluded from positions they should have been matched with — or have not been offered any job at all.
The union said, for example, that staff working in acute mental health were being transferred to aged care and emergency department nurses were offered jobs in surgical wards.
Others complain there was a lack of detail around shift patterns, staff-to-patient ratios and pay.
On Monday afternoon meetings were held between the union, the health district and Health Minister Brad Hazzard with no resolution.
The opening of Northern Beaches Hospital on October 30 will see the closure of Manly Hospital and the loss of Mona Vale’s emergency department, replaced by a 24-hour urgent care service.
The union’s Manly branch president, Lyn Hopper said Healthscope needed to reveal details including how many nurses were needed, the skill mix and how many nursing assistants would be hired.
“The lack of transparency causes a high level of suspicion as to how low the standard of care will be,” she said.
“This is a private hospital. Healthscope won’t give us details of the standard of care they will be offering the public patients.”
A health district spokesman said the transition would be as “smooth and fair as possible”.