industry & reform
State of play
Will the global coronavirus
pandemic lead to a greater
appreciation of nurses?
Cath Rogers interviewed by Conor Burke
Around the world we’ve seen nationwide claps for nurses,
art installations dedicated to nurses, and countless social
media appreciation posts. But at what point does the
nursing profession say: “Keep your applause and appreciate us
where it counts: pay, conditions and year-round respect from
politicians.”
Why does it take a crisis to recognise the essential role that
nurses play?
One positive outcome from the COVID-19 crisis could be that
we might finally understand the true value of nurses. That’s the
opinion of Professor Cath Rogers, a former nurse and the current
dean of health at Torrens University.
The year 2020 was officially designated the International Year
of the Nurse and Midwife by the World Health Organization in
celebration of a profession that has now become a focal point
around the globe during the pandemic.
Rogers says the pandemic should not obscure the fundamental
role nurses play in providing healthcare.
As we look to a future beyond COVID‐19, we should continue
to improve the nursing profession, according to Rogers, and that
should start with how we train our nurses.
Aged Care Insight caught up with Rogers, who was a clinical
nurse for over a decade before joining the ranks of academia, to
discuss this and other topics.
ACI: Much of the conversation right now is centred on whether
we, as a society, value nurses. In your opinion, do we?
CR: We do and we don’t. Absolutely, society trusts nurses for
their caring. There are plenty of surveys that show that year
after year. But are we valued? I’m not so sure about that. I think
that assuming nursing is all about caring, while true, also misses
the fact that nursing is highly professionalised, requires a very
broad knowledge and skills base, and is simply not an easy
thing to do.
So, yes, we value nurses because they care, but no we don’t
value the true professional role of nursing.
Around the world, PPE shortages, staffing and pay levels are
coming to the fore. Even in NSW, they’re talking about freezing
the pay for key workers such as nurses. Does that show us what
policymakers think of nurses?
Frankly, I think policymakers also have that binary approach to
nursing: “Yes, we need nurses, but on the other hand they can be
really difficult,” or “We don’t want to acknowledge the professional
role of nursing, because that’s really just too troublesome and too
expensive.”
Do you believe we’ll see a shift following the pandemic? Will
governments, regardless of their ideologies, invest more
money in the health industry and profession?
I don’t think the whole world will shift for nursing, but I think
some key things will, and I certainly hope they will. For example,
I’m a Queenslander, and I watched previous state governments
strip public health and public health nursing out of its health
workforce essentially.
I think post COVID-19 we will clearly see that we need to do far
more in public health. We need to do far more in community care,
and far more in prevention.
That will help to redress the balance to some degree. But it
would be unrealistic for nursing to believe that because nurses
have been valued so much through this pandemic, that therefore
ultimately all of our problems will be fixed.
Fiscal conservatives argue that top government workers need
to be paid a lot of money to attract the top candidates. If that’s
the reasoning, why isn’t that applied to health?
The truth is that the nursing salary bill is really expensive because
nurses constitute over 50 per cent of the health workforce. So
if you give a pay rise to nurses, that makes an enormous dent in
the health budget. If you give a pay rise to other professionals,
14 agedcareinsite.com.au