Australian nurses quit as understaffing, Covid-19 pressures take toll on hospitals

Australian medicos are at breaking point as Covid cases spiral and put the hospital system under enormous pressure.

Exclusive: Senior nurses are quitting to become baristas because severe understaffing and the unbearable pressure of Covid means they can no longer provide professional levels of patient care.

Health staff are being asked to look after more than three times the number of patients they should, with one fifth of the hospital workforce off sick.

Many have not taken leave for 18 months and are routinely being called in to cover shifts on their days off.

It can also be revealed medicos are taking their own lives at rates more than double the general population, as three years of strain on the system takes its toll.

Alarmingly, doctors warn the worst is yet to come, with Covid cases forecast to triple in coming weeks.

Public health experts are predicting hospitalisations due to the virus will soar beyond the January peak of 5400 as two new highly infectious variants BA. 4 and BA. 5 sweep the nation.

Australian Medical Association vice president Dr Chris Moy says chief medical officers are worried about the BA. 4 and BA. 5 Omicron sub-variants.

Australian Medical Association (AMA) vice president Dr Chris Moy said the new variants escaped immunity from vaccines and past infections.

“I’ve actually heard real fear in the voices of chief medical officers for the first time for a while, so that’s that sort of gives you an idea of how worried they are,” he said.

New data from rostering software company Deputy shows almost triple the hospital staff are required to deal with the current workload compared to 2020.

In some hospitals one nurse is being left in charge of 14 patients when it is not safe for them to care for more than four patients at a time.

NSW AMA president Dr Michael Bonning says “no one signed up to put their life at risk”. Picture: Toby Zerna

NSW AMA president Dr Michael Bonning said one of his hospital colleagues was repeatedly finishing work at 3am and was back on the job again five hours later.

He said she was so tired her husband had to talk to her on the phone as she drove home so she didn’t crash the car.

“No one signed up to put their life at risk from being so tired that they can’t work and no one wanted to do this job so that they might put someone else’s life at risk because they are too tired to think straight,” Dr Bonning said.

Sydney paediatrician Dr Andrew McDonald, said hospitals were operating at 100 per cent capacity, nurses were in tears, doctors were suffering burnout and “the federal government must increase its funding of public hospitals (from 45) to 50 per cent of the cost”.

Central Coast Nurse Michelle Cashman is seeing nurses leaving the profession because conditions and understaffing in hospitals making the job untenable. Picture: David Swift

Senior nurse Michelle Cashman says the workload in public hospitals was ‘obscene” and nurses were leaving the profession in droves.

“Pretty much every day you’ll get a phone call or a message — can you work an extra shift?” she said.

“One particular nurse, who’s I think in her 40s, she’s now working with the local clubs.

“Another is working in a coffee shop as a barista.”
It’s not just public hospitals under pressure. Private Hospital Association CEO Michael Roff said his members were reporting they were short 5500 nurses.

With doctors and nurses and patients having to cancel surgery because of illness “hospitals are just sort of constantly scrambling to rearrange lists, and try and do as much work as they can,” he said.

Emergency physician Dr Steve Parnis said simple changes that could ease the pressure on the system would be to having a greater degree of flexibility with rosters, give junior doctors contracts that lasted beyond 12 months and pay overtime no questions asked.

“The culture of people being subtly discouraged from claiming the extra hours that they work and some people go to work for an eight hour shift and end up working 16 to 20 has to end,” he said.

Originally published as Australian nurses quit as understaffing, Covid-19 pressures take toll on hospitals