Lately going to the toilet is the only break I get because there’s a constant stream of patients coming through the door. I barely get through one and another arrives. Our triage space and waiting room are chockablock.
These partial strikes are highlighting where the deficits are in the system: We don’t have the resources for a fully-functioning and equipped health emergency service because we’re inundated with primary care patients.
As usual, our waiting room is full of Healthline referrals and general practice patients who couldn’t get appointments. It’s a disgrace.
I get it — I worked in primary care, I know what it looks like. They’re inundated as well. And we do not have enough nurse practitioners or clinical nurse specialists (CNS) who could manage those patients.
More money needs to be put into primary care to relieve the pressure on secondary care. Mistakes are happening because we’re overworked and trying to see too many people at once.
We need more nurses. When they stopped hiring that created a huge gap in our roster. We’re about eight FTE short at the moment — that’s a lot.
I feel f****d off. Because I know what I’m going into this afternoon — another shift like yesterday.
Some of those primary care patients that left will be back again at ED. They’ve got nowhere to go, that’s the problem — and it isn’t their fault. It’s the system that’s been created so that people feel lost. They don’t have any support.
A woman said she was told by telehealth to come down and have her baby checked, and I thought ‘you know what, that’s because they need a set of eyes to look at it’.
GP-land should have the capacity to look at that child and say ‘yay’ or ‘nay’ before she arrives at ED.
“Nurses need to be critical thinkers, not handmaidens.”
It was a really small rash, but I had to show that compassion in my voice and say ‘you know what, your baby’s going to be fine, but if you’re happy to wait, it will be a few hours (I don’t say it will actually be six) — but your child will be seen’.
They need to fix this broken system. They need to throw some money at it. We’ve got skilled staff here ready to go.
We all knew when we voted for this action that this was going to be difficult. We knew that we had a staffing shortfall, but we need that to be highlighted. We’re in it for the big picture.
Nurses need to be critical thinkers, not handmaidens. We need to stop and critically think about work requests during these strikes: is this for the long-term betterment of myself, my colleagues and our patients?