Work gets tougher as pay issue becomes a pain

AS an aged-care nurse for 20 years, Terri Burrell knows what is keeping workers under pressure.

AS an aged-care nurse who has been working in the sector for 20 years, Terri Burrell knows too well what is keeping the workers at the coalface under pressure.

"When I started, most people who came into nursing homes were aged and frail," the 48-year-old nurse at the Cardinal Freeman Aged Care Home in Sydney's inner west said.

"They had perhaps had a stroke and couldn't care for themselves at home, so it was basic nursing care.

"But now many people have dementia, and they are very difficult to care for, behaviour-wise.

"They can be aggressive, and they are usually not the person they were before -- their families find it hard to cope."

Even the "meekest and mildest old lady" could prove a challenge to manage if she turned physically aggressive, and yet ever-larger numbers of such patients had to be cared for by staff operating on much smaller staff-to-patient ratios than in the hospital sector.

While public hospital nurses in NSW were keeping up their push for the government to ensure there was one nurse for every four patients, Mrs Burrell said her facility had to manage overnight with one registered nurse and two nursing assistants looking after 59 residents.

"Just because it's night, it doesn't mean they sleep, let me tell you," she said.

Hers was a "very good" facility that rostered on more staff than regulations required, since it could put just two staff on duty overnight.

Another issue was the lower pay: as a nurse of 30 years' experience, 20 years of it in aged care, Mrs Burrell has reached her maximum earning capacity of $31 a hour.

"We (registered nurses) are paid $5-$6 an hour less than in the public hospital system, and that makes it harder to recruit," she said.

"It's a shocking rate of pay if you look at the experience we have got.

"It would be nice if someone came into an aged-care facility and looked at the residents and the care we give . . .

"We give the same nursing they give in the hospitals, except we don't have a doctor on standby."