When it was opened, Member for Bega Andrew Constance called it a “metro hospital in a dairy paddock”, but one nurse within the regional hospital has come forward to apologise to the public for what they describe as problems caused by changes to the nursing profession.
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The nurse, who Fairfax has chosen not to name, wants the community to understand the pressures involved in modern nursing and apologised on behalf of all their colleagues for recent concerns at the new hospital.
“We often hear the community talking about how their nearest and dearest, who are at our long awaited new hospital, have not had a wash for days, or their bed not made for days,” they said.
“We often hear about how long they [patients] have had to wait in the emergency department, or how stressed nurses are.”
The nurse said while the community feedback is distressing, calls for change have been ignored within the system.
“They tell us they have it covered, only to find they have resources so stretched that the smallest incident puts an unreasonable amount of stress on all concerned,” they said.
They describe a role “ruled by paperwork”.
“We are threatened that if we don’t have all our risk assessments done we will be performance managed,” they said.
“Mind you this won’t be on how we care for your friend or relative, but on whether we ticked all the boxes correctly, and in a limited amount of time.
“Apparently if our pretty coloured pie charts are all filled then your relative won’t have a fall, won’t get a pressure area, and all achieve their ideal body mass index.”
The nurse said the profession no longer has time to sit and talk to patients, hold their hand and focus on personal care.
“We are sick of having to rush during our delivery of care, especially when it involves maybe the end of someone’s life,” they said.
“We ask for more staff but they just shrug and say ‘no’. As nurses we feel disempowered and very sad.”
The nurse said following incidents it is lower level staff who are investigated.
“The public and the clinical staff all know that all we need is more staff – then at least we could stop and care, tick all the boxes they want and not feel the need to apologise,” they said.
The BDN has sought comment from the hospital, and at the time of going to print was awaiting an official response.
