15 September 2022
Shortages of senior trained staff in regional areas continue to pose a serious threat to health services in our local communities.
We have seen maternity services closed or suspended and a lack of senior RNs in the Emergency Departments. This mixed in with a very junior workforce on the wards is leaving patients and the community in a vulnerable position.
Port Pirie is sending patients to Port Augusta for dialysis for lack of renal nurses, and of course the difficulty in attracting doctors to regional areas has been well-documented.
ANMF (SA Branch) CEO/Secretary Adj Associate Professor Elizabeth Dabars AM said shortages of services in the regions “is an indicator of the failure of successive governments to actually do what we describe as appropriate and proper workforce planning”.
“A lot of people will say, ‘Oh, well, we are trying to plan and we are trying to get a workforce and we are advertising’. But advertising is not the answer.
“It goes back to core principles of saying, ‘What services do we need in South Australia? What are we prepared to provide and how are we then going to staff those services and what strategies do we need to have in place to attract and retain people to all areas that we need to provide those services to’.
“We have taken heart with relatively recent discussions with the new incoming State Government that they are prepared to look at workforce, that they are prepared to sit down with us and explore what is needed in order to make sure that we do have a workforce, not just now but into the future.
“Another element to this relates to our public sector enterprise bargaining negotiations, which are currently underway. In fact, we are waiting with bated breath for a response from government, but some of the things we have put forward do go to the heart of this.
“If you are serious about getting people out to country areas, and we certainly are, you do need to have strategies and systems in place to attract them and to retain them.
“We need to have attraction and retention allowances out in country South Australia. That is just a fact. If you offer the same terms and conditions to those available in Adelaide then there is no extra incentive to work in the regions,’’ Ms Dabars said.
“You have to look at other things like availability of accommodation, for instance. I know that this is an issue in a lot of regional services.
“Additionally, there are acute shortages of midwives in a number of country areas and we are facing interruptions in midwifery services in large regional towns.
“We need new modernised models of midwifery care such as those implemented in the northern Yorke Peninsula area and other country settings,’’ Ms Dabars said.
These models provide a basis for more rewarding and more effective use of midwives’ skills than traditional models of rostering staff around the clock.
“Unless we update models of care, provide upgraded attraction and retention incentives, we will continue to struggle to keep midwifery services staffed and birthing services open in regional settings,’’ Ms Dabars said.
She said the previous government “really did not listen’’ to the concerns of the ANMF.
ANMF (SA Branch) will continue to work with CHSA to ensure that any proposals tabled will be in consultation with members. We have been advocating for advanced nursing positions for many years.
Meantime our Public Sector 2022 Enterprise Agreement negotiations are continuing – we hope to bring a new update in the coming weeks.
Public Sector Enterprise Agreement 2022.