“Often we will only have one doctor at the hospital and they are on call 24/7.”
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Registered nurses have been offered $800 weekly bonus payments to fill positions at Bourke,Lightning Ridge,Wellington and Walgett,according to NSW Health ads posted on social media.
Recent reports detailed nurses at Bourke saying they have been abused,threatened and physically attacked,due to a lack of security and staff.
TheHerald understands the crisis at the hospital has triggered a SafeWork NSW inspection of the facility this week.
“This is the pattern of unfilled shifts until end of March,” Vickye Coffey,a Western NSW Local Health District general manager,wrote in an email to senior managers.
“The Bourke MPS managers are exhausted,” she wrote. “Please,please,if at all possible can you check with your staff to see if anyone can go to Bourke from Monday morning … this is a dire situation.”
Bourke Hospital,roughly 800 kilometres from Sydney,has about 30 beds and services large parts of western NSW. The nearest health service is at least an hour away.
NSW Nurses and Midwives’ Association general secretary Brett Holmes said western NSW had been hit by devastating staff shortfalls in recent months,including 140 vacant nursing shifts at Lightning Ridge health service during January.
“We’ve got severe staffing problems in western NSW. It is a disaster out there,” Mr Holmes said.
A spokesperson for NSW Health said securing “nursing and other healthcare staff in remote locations is a challenge across Australia,and Western NSW Local Health District uses a range of recruitment strategies when positions are vacant”.
“The[local health district] has been successful in recruiting to the health service manager and nurse manager positions at the Bourke Health Service,” the spokesperson said.
“Western NSW Local Health District has also sought volunteers from outside the local health district,including senior staff from Sydney Local Health District to rotate into Bourke,and has directed neighbouring larger sites to identify appropriately trained nursing staff who can support the roster.”
Earlier this month the new Minister for Regional Health Bronnie Taylor told the regional hospitals inquiry that she would focus on addressing workforce staffing issues.
Her appointment was due to the “issues brought to the fore” by the parliamentary inquiry,she said,and the realisation the government “need[ed] to do better”.
“For the NSW National Party there was a real push from us to say that we need to have a real focus on rural and regional health issues,” she said.
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