22 February 2022
“Beds, not basketballs. Staff, not stadiums,’’ was the rousing chant from nurses and midwives at the ANMF (SA Branch) headquarters today.
The passionate health care staff gathered at our Ridleyton offices to hear State Labor Leader Peter Malinauskas commit to employing 300 extra nurses and legislate for staff ratios for South Australia’s public hospitals. This follows an earlier pledge by Labor to scrap Steven Marshall’s $662 million inner-city basketball stadium and instead invest the money in health.
Labor says a Malinauskas Labor Government will recruit 300 extra nurses to improve care and safety for patients, reduce the overwhelming burden on nurses in public hospitals – and help fix the ambulance ramping crisis.
The pledge for 300 more nurses comes on top of Labor's commitment to recruit 100 extra doctors across the public health system, as well as opening an extra 300 beds, including 98 for mental health patients, across hospitals.
Labor's recruitment of nurses will include:
• 212 extra nurses to support Labor's pledge to open 300 extra beds across the public health system.
• 12 extra specialist nurses for children's cancer and mental health care at the Women's and Children's Hospital.
• 76 additional nurses to target other priority needs and support the implementation of safe staffing ratios across the health system.
Labor says it is also committed to enshrining in law nurse-patient ratios – providing safer care for patients, helping to reduce readmission rates and reducing the massive workload on existing nurses. This follows similar legislation that has been enacted successfully in Victoria and Queensland.
The party says it will also work constructively with the ANMF and our members on workforce planning, security in our hospitals, fully implementing criteria led discharge and continuing to modernise the nursing profession.
ANMF (SA Branch) CEO/Secretary Adj Associate Professor Elizabeth Dabars AM said the union was “absolutely thrilled” with the commitment.
“The issues for nurses and midwives and care staff is that they want to make sure that their patients are given adequate and appropriate care and they just simply can’t do that in this environment,’’ Ms Dabars said.
“We put forward our Health Policy Position Statement in June last year, we asked all the parties to respond to that. We have had some really positive commitments given by the Labor Party in response to our policy ideas.
“We are not party political - but we are fiercely advocating for the community at large and in particular nurses and midwives and care workers in this state because we know the present situation is not acceptable. We believe the situation can and should be radically improved,’’ Ms Dabars said.
“So, we are absolutely pleased and delighted that the Labor Party and Peter Malinauskas and (Shadow Health Minister) Chris Picton have been here today to announce their commitment to more staff.
“We are also thrilled that they are committed to legislated nurse-patient ratios and we are thrilled they have provided commitments in terms of keeping public health public as a universal human right and also to ensure there is a target of 90 per cent occupancy within the hospital system which should help put an end to ramping.
“So, we are really delighted that they are committed to doing what needs to be done and that starts with putting beds before basketballs and staff before stadiums.’’
You can watch Peter Malinauskas taking a video selfie with nurses and midwives here.