ACT Legislative Assembly: Rachel Stephen Smith defends ACT nurse ratios
ACT Health Minister Rachel Stephen-Smith has defended nurse to patient ratios following scrutiny from the Liberals.
ACT Health Minister Rachel Stephen-Smith has hit back at accusations the Canberra Health Service has failed to comply with nurse to patient ratios
Shadow Health Minister Leanne Castley claimed a “ratios update’ document, obtained via freedom of information, from February 18 this year revealed on February 15 only eight out of 17 wards in the territory were fully compliant with ratios during the morning shift.
Ms Castley accused the ACT Government for failing to comply with its own ratios which were introduced to February this year.
“Health Minister Stephen-Smith failed to properly plan for workforce shortages due to COVID-19 as well as staff quitting and on leave,” Ms Castley said.
“The health system is cracking, and the Minister has to stop the exodus of nurses before it gets worse.”
Ms Castley tabled a motion pushing for the ACT Government to publicly release nurse ratio figures regularly.
ACT Health Minister @RachelSS_MLA fronts media addressing concerns about nurse ratios raised by @CanberraLibs MLA Leanne Castley 1/2 pic.twitter.com/N5MyLKQrBG
— Julia Kanapathippillai (@JuliaPillai) June 8, 2022
Ms Stephen-Smith didn’t mince her words when she fronted reporters on Wednesday.
“Well this is a really an astonishing motion for Ms Castley,” she said.
“She represents the one party in the Legislative Assembly that did not support the implementation of nurse to patient ratios in the 2020 election.”
The Health Minister told reporters while the ratios were put into place in February this year there is an “amnesty period”, due to end at the end of the month, for wards to work towards complying with ratios.
“We were very clear with staff and we’ve worked in partnership with the (Australian nursing and midwifery federation) to say its going to take us a little while to get to full compliance with ratios.
“That‘s why there’s an amnesty period until the end of June.
“We started the implementation of ratios from the first of February and Ms Castley has taken data from the 15th of February and talked about it as if it's the current situation.”
A spokesman for Rachel Stephen Smith told The Canberra Star from May 23 to 29 nurse ratio compliance within Canberra Health Services were at 89 per cent.
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