Staff Crises are Destroying Victorian Hospitals
24/10/2022
Senior hospital staff are warning the government to take immediate action as the staffing crisis increases in Victoria’s health sector.
Coral Thrupp, a senior registered nurse at Melbourne’s Alfred Hospital said the staffing shortage is “dire and people are dying”.
“It’s a lot worse than what people think, the hospital is filthy, nurses are exhausted, and patients are dying.”
In a recent declaration to the public on July 17th, Daniel Andrews released a statement on “Supporting Our Healthcare Workers to Deliver Care”.
“This innovative package will deliver system-wide improvements for our hospitals to respond to the ongoing impacts of the pandemic, making patients time in hospital more efficient.”
In response to the plan, Thrupp says “it’s just numbers and its sugar coating the other problems faced by more experienced staff”. She says that the plan “is great in theory” but the actual training of these nurses and doctors could “take months”, making the problem worse for senior staff.
“A step down from hospitals is the way to go, redirect some services to nursing homes and palliative care.”
In the Andrews report, he said that in the first week of July alone “there was a cumulative absence of more than 10,000 staff across the system”.
On August 30th, the Andrews government released a “$270-million-dollar package providing free degrees, training and upskilling for nurses and midwives”. From 2023 to 2024, students who want to study nursing or midwifery can do so with their HEC-s debt waived by the Andrews government. However, this has been met with some damning criticism from other university students who are feeling mistreated by this decision.
Latrobe marketing student, Olivia Bruns says that with the global pandemic “making these courses free will attract young people into this profession”. However, Bachelor of Nursing and Midwifery student, Courtney Gunn disagrees and says that this thinking is “a common consensus in my cohort as well”.
“I don’t think that it is fair to previous nursing/midwifery students, or students like me who had high school impacted by COVID-19 – 19 to still pay in full.”
Gunn says, “the nurses/midwives who are currently working are really deserving of that kind of funds”. Thrupp also believes that this incentive may not have a positive effect despite its good intentions.
She says it is “promoting a lack of love for the industry” and is worried that this incentive will draw in the wrong people because of its price tag. Currently, the staffing shortage she claims is due to “a lack of support, a lack of morale and burnout”. It is these things that need to be tackled before they can take on any more student nurses as “it looks good for numbers but not quality of work”.