Not enough nurses in NSW (Australia) hospitals

Note how the Left-leaning newspaper quoted below tries with its opening words to let a Leftist State government off the hook

Caught in the midst of a worldwide nursing shortage, the [NSW] Government has been forced to close hospital beds and defer elective surgery because there are too few staff to care for patients, a NSW Auditor-General's report says. [Getting nurses to nurse instead of doing "administration" (paperwork) all the time will not be considered of course] At the same time, an ageing population and a surge in chronic health conditions such as diabetes, obesity and heart disease is placing enormous strain on hospitals, it says.

Although the number of nurses had increased by 5500 in the past four years and resignation rates had fallen from 16 per cent to 14 per cent, there was still a chronic shortage, said Peter Achterstraat in his performance audit of NSW Health. [Because they are all busy doing paperwork.]

The report acknowledges NSW Health has used a number of successful strategies to increase nurse numbers, and overall has "done well to attract and retain nurses". "The department improved nurses' wages to make them the highest paid in Australia, recruited over 1000 nurses from overseas and attracted nearly 1500 ex-nurses back to the public health sector," it says. "These are all positive initiatives, but it is too early to judge whether they will ensure that the nursing workforce in public hospitals will be adequate in the future." While more nurses have been employed, 45 per cent of them work part-time, forcing the department to rely on overtime and agency nurses to fill the gaps, the report says.

The general secretary of the NSW Nurses' Association, Brett Holmes, said the Government was seeking to recruit 1200 nurses to fill vacancies. "Thirty per cent of our nursing workforce are over 50, so there needs to be a long-term plan for their replacement and a large proportion . need to be registered nurses," he said. "We can further improve recruitment. There are clearly still more nurses who have maintained their enrolment but who aren't working. The Government has been successful in getting more than 1500 of those back already."

The Minister for Health, John Hatzistergos, laid the blame at the feet of the Federal Government, saying more than 2000 extra university places were needed to keep pace with demand. "We are going to be substantially short on nursing numbers, and we will have to go overseas to recruit," Mr Hatzistergos said. He dismissed claims by the Opposition health spokeswoman, Jillian Skinner, that the Government had inflated the increase in nurse numbers by double counting agency staff. Only permanent full- and part-time staff had been included in the figures, he said.

Problems in recruiting and retaining nurses would remain difficult to resolve unless both federal and state governments reviewed the role of all health-care workers, including nurses, doctors and allied health workers, said the executive director of the College of Nursing, Professor Judy Lumby. She said other health sectors had been affected, indicating a need to move away from old structures and divides. "We have to rethink the way in which we care for people, with more focus on primary care and preventative health," Professor Lumby said. The Auditor-General recommended NSW Health improve its monitoring of the nursing shortage, reduce reliance on overtime and agency nurses and develop better plans to manage its nursing workforce.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL hospitals and health insurance schemes should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the very poor and minimal regulation. Both Australia and Sweden have large private sector health systems with government reimbursement for privately-provided services so can a purely private system with some level of government reimbursement or insurance for the poor be so hard to do?

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