Latest Nursing News

WEST Moreton health officials plan to replace redundant staff with nursing graduates and medical interns - but the nursing union says the impact of lost experience will be felt on the ward. The QT revealed yesterday 77 nursing staff and one doctor accepted voluntary redundancies from the West Moreton Hospital and Health Service last financial year.

TASMANIAN nurses are ``very likely'' to take industrial action over attempts to change their working conditions, according to Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation state secretary Neroli Ellis. After about six weeks of negotiations with the state government, the ANMF has agreed to a 2 per cent wage increase.

Tasmanian nurses are threatening industrial action over a pay offer from the state government. Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation (ANMF) members in Hobart and Launceston have rejected a two per cent pay rise, saying new conditions cancel it out.

A local council in north-west Queensland is spending $10,000 a month to keep a nurse employed in a small town. The State Government informed the McKinlay Shire Council it would no longer fund the nurse at the McKinlay Bush Nurse Clinic because it believes it should be funded by the Commonwealth, and the federal body, Central and North-West Medicare Local, hoped to find money for the position in the short-term.

Nurses in Hobart are threatening to take industrial action over attempts to change their working conditions. The Government has to negotiate a new pay deal with the state's nurses by December. Neroli Ellis from the Australian Nursing Federation says a 2 per cent wage rise is on the table.

WEST Moreton Health Service delivered savings totalling more than $7 million in the last financial year - but at a cost of redundancies among frontline staff. The health services annual report, released yesterday, revealed nurses accepted half of the 154 voluntary redundancies approved by the health service.

The effectiveness of nursing and midwifery activities undertaken at the Sunshine Coast Hospital and Health Service (SCHHS) in Queensland looks set to benefit from a reinforced relationship with the University of the Sunshine Coast (USC).

THE State Government has backflipped on plans to cut $1 million for the Philip Kennedy Centre at Largs Bay, saving its hospice from closure. More than 5000 people signed a petition calling on the State Government to reconsider its decision to axe funding from the 12-bed palliative care centre. Health Minister Jack Snelling announced this morning the centre would be funded for another year. "I've directed my department to extend the funding for at least another 12 months for the Philip Kennedy Centre so they can continue running their hospice," he told ABC Adelaide.

Hunter New England Health says it has filled seven nurse positions which have been at the centre of an industrial dispute in the operating theatres at Newcastle's John Hunter Hospital. The hospital's nurses had planned to stop work in one operating theatre this week, but Hunter New England Health successfully applied to the Industrial Relations Commission to prevent the action taking place.

NSW Nurses and Midwives Association (NSW NMA) members at Dubbo Hospital voted to close the six beds in the hospital’s Emergency Medical Unit (EMU) from Monday and ban unreasonable overtime in the emergency department (ED) from next Friday October 4, in response to unsafe nursing levels in the ED. The six beds will remain closed until all nursing vacancies are filled and the new staff actively working in the ED, or the vacancies are backfilled by agency nurses.