Patients at risk: senior nurses become Nurse Educators for no pay

With a large number of new nurse grads and inexperienced nurses being fast-tracked into Queensland Health, two things are obvious to NPAQ:

1. Many if not all of our senior, experienced nurses are going to be called in to be unpaid nurse educators and mentors to the hoard of semi-skilled and inexperienced nurses.
2. Patients are at risk from Queensland Health bureaucrats throwing inexperienced or semi-skilled nurses and nurse graduates into wards without suitable training and development.

Clearly, sacking so many nurses and mismanaging the health system to the extent that large numbers of skilled nurses are fed up and leaving, is going to take a toll on quality of care.

Health bureaucrats don’t care, staff numbers are going down yet manager numbers are going up.

NPAQ is opposed to senior nurses being dragged away from their roles where they can add value to patients' lives to put them into training and mentoring ‘newbies’ without adequate compensation.

If the healthcare system and the education system have cut corners, patients are at risk and the bureaucrats must bear the risk for these senseless decisions, not our nurses.