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Ratios being ignored
Hospital staff fed up over nurse-to-patient ratios.
The NSW Nurses and Midwives’ Association is calling for improved nurse-to-patient ratios on the back of figures showing that the most recent winter season was the busiest quarter on record for emergency departments in NSW public hospitals.
In its most recent Healthcare Quarterly report looking at July to September, the Bureau of Health Information( BHI) said there were more than 720,000 ED presentations in the winter season, up 9.4 per cent on the same period last year.
BHI acting chief executive Dr Kim Sutherland said winter is typically the busiest quarter for NSW public hospitals, but this winter season was particularly busy as staff dealt with one of the worst flu seasons the state had experienced in recent years.
The report also found fewer patients had treatment started on time than the same period last year( down 3.6 per cent), and fewer spent four hours or less in the ED( down 3.3 per cent).
Sutherland said:“ While the report shows decreases of between three and four percentage points in emergency department timeliness measures, there were increases of between nine and 10 per cent in the number of patients presenting to – and arriving by ambulance at – emergency departments.”
The general secretary of the NSWNMA, Brett Holmes, said the difficult flu season generated massive workloads for nurses, doctors and other hospital staff.
“ Many nurses spent the winter period working extremely short staffed, missing meal breaks and working many hours of overtime to keep up with demand,” he said.
Holmes added the report’ s results were yet another reason why the Berejiklian government needed to seriously improve and expand nurse-to-patient ratios.
“ We know ratios save lives... when they are implemented correctly and maintained,” he said, adding the union had seen many instances of the minimum number of nurses to patients deliberately not being rostered.
“ Our members are deeply disappointed and fed up that their calls for better nurseto-patient ratios continue to be ignored.”
Holmes said the Berejiklian government and ministry of health needed to take note of their nursing and midwifery staff and improved ratios. ■
Call for chronic pain strategy
Government needs to focus on national strategy to reduce chronic pain burden, peak body says.
Daily self-management of chronic pain is the key to reducing disability and facilitating return-to-work, but more needs to be done in terms of national policy, health experts say.
Research on the topic was published by the Australian Healthcare and Hospital Association’ s Deeble Institute for Health Policy Research last week.
Presenting the data, senior research director Dr Linc Thurecht said chronic pain now affects at least one in five Australian adults and children, and one in three people over the age of 65.
“ The most recent data from 2007, shows chronic pain costs the Australian economy more than $ 34 billion annually, with productivity costs of $ 11 billion and direct healthcare costs of $ 7 billion.“ Ten years later, these figures are likely to have increased,” he said.“ To date, our national response to more effectively prevent and manage our pain burden has been fragmented.
“ By making pain a national priority for policy change, we can start to take steps to reducing the impact of pain towards a reinvigorated and longer term national pain strategy.”
Painaustralia chief executive Carol Bennett said the latest Health Policy Evidence Brief put forward six actions the federal government should focus on as part of a national strategy to reduce the burden of chronic pain on families and the economy.
The proposed actions are:
1. Empower consumers to understand pain treatment and selfmanagement, as better educated consumers will create less demand for pain services.
2. Act to prevent chronic pain and intervene early, as this would reduce opioid misuse and its associated cost to the economy.
3. Increase access to pain services in regional areas; for example, telehealth services and outreach clinics in remote Australia. 4. Build capacity in the health workforce to prevent, manage, treat and support those with chronic pain. 5. Facilitate return-to-work through policy reform to reduce painrelated disability.
6. Support a better understanding of pain through targeted research into the impact it has on productivity, the economy and communities.
To read the brief, visit ahha. asn. au and search under Publications. ■
2 | nursingreview. com. au