Wide Bay Hospital executive throw nurses under the bus

While the Wide Bay Hospital and Health Service executive team enjoy their holidays they are not sorting out the strike by members of the Australian Workers Union and Together Union over pay and conditions, and they are not doing anything to fix the problem.

“Ms Carroll and her high paid executive team are doing nothing to resolve support workers pay claims. What she has done is to pass the extra workload on to nurses. Nurses are now cleaners, catering staff, wards people, security and clinical support workers as well as trying to care for patients lives,” Nurses Professional Association of Queensland President Marg Gilbert said today.

This dispute has gone on for too long and the health bureaucrats have no solutions. And many nurses are afraid of the Wide Bay executives because as Queensland Health Minister Yvette D’Ath put it recently in the Courier Mail: “It is very concerning that not only are staff not willing to speak up, but staff are scared to speak up …”.

“Tasking skilled nurses with support work means that nurses have less time to spend with patients and this will directly compromise patient safety”, Marg Gilbert added, “These bureaucrats do not understand the adverse consequences of taking nurses away from frontline patient care”.

It is time these high paid executives fixed this high risk problem which is putting the Wide Bay community at risk. “This is why health executives get paid the big bucks, yet executive mismanagement of this and other issues is why nurses continue to resign from Queensland Health,” NPAQ President Marg Gilbert stated.

• Patient and staff safety is at risk because there is no contingency active for security staff.
• Nurses have reported that rubbish is building up, and this health and safety problem must be managed better.
• Stock and some medical supplies are running dangerously low.
• Patient flow is being affected due to the slowdown in bed space cleans.
• We hear that patient handlers will not take any direction from registered nurses unless the direction is written down.
• And more problems are to come as work bans increase.

The Wide Bay Hospital and Health Service executive team is the problem, not the solution. The CEO should solve this problem now and she must remove this burden from nurses and the risks to patients before something goes horribly wrong.