Too little too late: Patient profession out of patience

The Australian Government's response to the 2002 Senate Inquiry into Nursing (The Patient Profession: Time for Action), shows it is turning a blind eye to the profession at a time of crisis, according to Australia's peak nursing body, the Australian Nursing Federation.

ANF federal secretary Jill Iliffe said nurses had waited 40 months for the Government's response, only to find it was refusing to take responsibility for the report's key recommendations, leaving it largely up to state and territory governments, nursing organisations and individual employers.

Despite strong recommendations to the contrary, the Howard Government has failed to commit to any significant new measures to remedy the problems facing the nursing profession and its development at a time of national and international nursing shortages,' Ms Iliffe said.

'Particularly offensive is the fact that the report delivers:

• No chief nursing officer
• No commitment to wage parity between aged care and acute care nurses
• No improved mechanism for determining nursing university places
• No money targeted for nursing research
• No funding to develop advanced mental health nursing courses
• No national nursing recruitment strategy
• No support for family-friendly employment practices
• No national reporting system for violence and aggression toward nurses
• No support for OH&S practices to protect nurses from violence in their workplaces; such as supporting the prosecution of violent offenders; and ensuring nurses do not work alone in areas of high or uncertain risk.

'The case for these measures has been well and truly established, not only through this Senate Inquiry, but also through other inquiries, including the National Review of Nursing Education, Our Duty of Care, and the Hogan Review of Aged Care.

'All studies point to the need to develop a highly skilled and sustainable nursing workforce, through the immediate implementation of measures such as those outlined in the 2002 Senate report. Of course, doing so requires additional funding, but at a time of national and international nursing shortages, the community expects their governments to dig that much deeper to give nurses the resources they need to provide high quality nursing care to the Australian people,' Ms Iliffe said.