Pictured at the Sir Henry Parkes statue in the centre of Parkes, nurses and midwives rallied together for community and government support to increase staff and safety at the Parkes Emergency Department.
Nurses and midwives working at Parkes Hospital rallied in their own time, in the centre of town on Tuesday, 18 November to raise serious concerns about understaffing in the emergency department (ED).Members of the NSW Nurses and Midwives’ Association (NSWNMA) Parkes Hospital Branch say they’re working with unsafe staffing levels on a regular basis.
This is resulting in increased workloads, staff burning out and safe patient care being compromised.
Along with staffing concerns, the Branch is seeking dedicated after-hours security personnel and appropriate administration support, with the ED reception desk currently unmanned for 20 hours a day. This has resulted in nurses performing non-clinical duties including answering phones and booking transport.
O’Bray Smith, President, NSW Nurses and Midwives’ Association, attended the rally in support of the Nurses and midwives and said “ The staff are working in really unsafe conditions here at Parkes, they’ve only got two nurses on a shift for about 16hrs a day, which is really unsafe for the amount of admissions that they get. This community deserves safe staffing levels and they don’t have it.”
“Nurses do not come out on the street lightly, they’ve been to the internal meetings, they’ve been to management, they’ve written letters, they’ve done basically everything they could possibly do to engage management in this and they have just hit a dead end” Said O’Bray Smith.
We also spoke to an emotional Tania Elsley who is a NSWNMA Parkes Hospital Branch delegate working in the emergency department of Parkes Hospital, she said “We are here today because there is a drastic care issue and a concern from the nursing staff at our hospital that people are falling through the gaps of the care we can deliver. We are exhausted, in the last two years four senior clinicians have left the emergency department due to burnout.”
“We are asking for one senior clinician on every shift, that is three extra staff per day.
Parkes, Forbes, Mudgee and Cowra have the same sort of demographic, the same bed capacity, we are supposed to have the same sort of staffing, but we do not.”
“My passion drives me, it is why we are still here, and it is unfair. The community needs to start writing letters to MPs and start their own petitions. When you come to emergency and you think your care is substandard it is not because I didn’t want to deliver it, it is because I can’t,” said Tania Elsley.
Concerned community members can write letters asking for MP’s to advocate on their behalf, including Mr Philip Donato MP, Member for Orange phildonato.com.au/contact/ The Hon. Ryan Park MP, Minister for Health and Regional Health https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/members/Pages/Member-details.aspx?pk=58 The Hon Stephen Lawrence, MLC www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/members/Pages/Member-details.aspx?pk=2297 or the Hon. Chris Minns MP, Premier of NSW www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/members/Pages/Member-details.aspx?pk=108