Nurses and midwives working at Northern Beaches Hospital will strike for 26 hours from 6am today, 24 March as part of a series of rolling stoppages at Healthscope hospitals.
NSW Nurses and Midwives’ Association (NSWNMA) members say they are refusing to give up their fight for staffing improvements and fair pay.
They’re calling on the private operator to put “patients and staff before profits and implement safe working conditions for nurses and midwives so they can provide quality patient care.”
Members are seeking mandated nurse/midwife to patient ratios, a 15% one-year wage increase, increased night shift penalty rates, and improved leave entitlements similar to their public counterparts.
State representatives Michael Regan (Wakehurst) and Jacqui Scruby (Pittwater), alongside Federal Member for Mackellar Sophie Scamps, attended the strike and supported NSWNMA members’ calls to put the hospital in public hands.
“When you have a private equity firm trying to make profit out of public health care. It just does not work. So we can see what’s happening. They are telling us their distress, their stress, they’re burning out, and they need our support. And the hospital should be back in public hands,” Dr Scamps told Manly Observer at the strike.
“It needs to go back to public hands to make sure that there’s safe nurse to patient ratios, that they are being paid the same as other nurses in public hospitals, that they can afford to live here and stay here on the Northern Beaches. We can’t afford to lose our nurses and our midwives.”
Northern Beaches Hospital is both a public and private hospital, with all operations currently run by Healthscope under contract with the NSW Government.
It is currently subject to its second Inquiry, as well as a performance audit.
NSWNMA members claim working conditions at the hospital are not only overwhelming, but they create an unsafe environment for patients. Lack of mandated nurse to patient ratios means patients can be left unattended even with staff going full 12-hour shifts with no breaks.
“You try working 12 hours without being able to have your break or go to the bathroom because you’re never relieved and the amount of staff never adds up to the number of patients,” a nurse told us at the strike.
“If they pay us correctly, people will come. They’re a private company. They have that choice… They are not interested in patient care, and they’re not interested in people in the Northern Beaches having quality care. We need to go back to being a public hospital so patients can get the care they deserve,”
“And so that we can afford to support our lifestyle and our families,” another nurse added.
“If we work with NSW Health, we would earn $2 more per hour than what we earn working for Healthscope, close to home at our family hospital, which is just appalling. We’re all trained the same. We all give the same quality of care, and to be paid less living in a very expensive area of Sydney, it’s ridiculous,”
Healthscope is reportedly in financial trouble and looking for a buyer, which local independent politicians say should be the government.
The NSWNMA has confirmed life-preserving care and minimum staffing levels will be maintained throughout the stop work action.
At the last strike on November 5 the NSWNMA NBH Union Representative said staff at the hospital “are being pushed beyond what is manageable.”
“The Northern Beaches Hospital is unique. We are a private hospital offering public health services, and this model was implemented by the former state government to replace the Manly and Mona Vale public hospitals. We have been excluded from the Safe Staffing ratios reform promised in the public health system. Our patients deserve the same level of care they would receive at any public hospital.”
In the previous strike Healthscope issued a statement that said they were disappointed with the industrial action and had continued with negotiations “in good faith” to “seek an agreement that’s fair and sustainable for our people and our hospitals.”
There has been no movement on these negotiations since that time.
Despite significant criticisms, the hospital does consistently perform better than or equal its peers in Bureau of Health data, particularly with regard to Emergency room wait times.
View the latest statistics here.
