Nurses walk off the job over staffing levels

Several hundred nurses walked off the job and alongside fellow unionists and their supporters flooded a Hobart street with placards. Here’s why.

Nurses from the Royal Hobart Hospital have walked off the job over staffing levels. Protest action on Tuesday, September 3, 2024.

Nurses have walked off the job at Royal Hobart Hospital to draw attention to unreasonable workloads they say are affecting staffing and patient care.

Several hundred nurses, fellow unionists and their supporters rallied in Campbell Street on Tuesday.

Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation Tasmanian Branch Secretary Emily Shepherd said staffing challenges have been ongoing well before the COVID-19 pandemic but have been exacerbated by the pandemic and now a national shortage.

“We’re here to highlight the ongoing issues that we have around safe staffing,” she said.

“It’s an ongoing challenge, it has been for many years.

“In 2018, we raised the alarm in our ‘Recruit, Retain, Recognise’ campaign and of course, staffing challenges have continued to increase and have been seriously exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, where we now face a national shortage of nurses and midwives.”

Nurses from the Royal Hobart Hospital have walked off the job over staffing levels. Protest action on Tuesday, September 3, 2024.

Ms Shepherd said at the RHH Emergency Department in the last 12 months, 44 per cent of shifts were worked below the required staffing minimum and there was more than 600 permanent positions vacant in the north and south regions.

She said the health department had agreed to increase the use of agency staff, to increase and streamline recruitment.

Liberal minister Roger Jaensch said the government was committed to recruiting more nurses.

“Nurses do a fantastic job day in, day out,” he said.

“We all rely on them, we would love to have more of them,” he said.

“That’s why Minister Barnett has been leading a recruitment blitz.

“I understand there have been around 750 inquiries in relation to that.

“That will go some way towards ensuring that we can fill the current vacancies and share the workload across more nurses.”

Greens health spokeswoman Cecily Rosol said her party backed the stop work action.

“When hospitals are understaffed, it puts people in danger,” she said.

“We’re seeing significant delays in patients receiving the vital healthcare treatment that they need due to staff shortages.

“They’re waiting in the emergency room, corridors and on the ramps. It’s just not good enough.”

Child safety and youth justice workers will take stop work action on Wednesday to protest staffing shortages in their sector.