“I didn’t want to announce a figure if we couldn’t fill those positions,” he said.
Loading
Hayes said NSW Health would be able to fill the roles,as well as employ 1850 additional paramedics as announced last week,describing wages and conditions as “better than most” other health systems.
He believed workforce fatigue would “diminish bit by bit” as more staff were hired,describing this as the “biggest drawback” to working in hospitals at present.
Michael Whaites,spokesperson for the NSW Nurses and Midwives Association,agreed there were enough people for the roles. However,he said “poor workloads” remained a deterrent and the union would continue topush for staff-to-patient ratios.
“It is always easier to retain staff by looking after them than it is to re-recruit them back into the system,” newly appointed Australian Medical Association NSW president Dr Michael Bonning said.
While he was “very supportive” of the investment,which he believed showed the government had listened to its workforce,Bonning said recruiting 7000 staff in the next year would be a challenge.
“NSW is hampered by outdated and not particularly competitive industrial awards,” he said.
With 40 per cent of the positions slated for regional areas,where it can be more difficult to recruit,Bonning said there could be a “cannibalising” of the workforce,where health staff upgrade jobs but create vacancies in the places they have left.
“We have to make sure doctors that are already in one place aren’t just taken to another place,” he said.
To reach the target of 10,000 extra healthcare workers,Perrottet said he and Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews would both push for targeted immigration of health professionals at the first meeting of the new national cabinet,the Council for the Australian Federation.
“Now that[international borders] have reopened there is a significant backlog,” he said,claiming the wait time for visas had reached 18 months.
Bonning said the AMA supported use of international workforce as long as it was “ethical”,given significant health challenges abroad,did not jeopardise domestic staff positions or push workforce problems “further down the road”.
“Other countries need their staff as well,” said Dr Michelle Atkinson,NSW chair of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons. She added that qualified health personnel not currently in the workforce were unlikely to return unless conditions improved,with double-shifts and overtime for surgical nursing staff now commonplace.
The workforce was in dire need of more people,she said,as it attempts to clear thebacklog caused by two years of intermittent restrictions on non-urgent operations including joint replacements,cancer investigations and ear nose and throat surgery.
Loading
“It’s not all related to people being off with COVID,there have been chronic shortages;down in the Shoalhaven area it’s been since the bushfires and floods,” she said.
The extent of the state’s elective surgery backlog will be revealed next week in the Bureau of Health Information’s quarterly report on services provided between January and March,when procedures were restricted for the third time in two years to assist hospitals amid a COVID-19 case surge.
with Lucy Cormack
Our Breaking News Alertwillnotify you of significant breaking news when it happens.Get it here.