Latest Nursing News

A new 24 hour home palliative care program has been launched in Tasmania. Tasmanian not-for-profit community nursing organisation The District Nurses will receive $38 million over the next three years to run a statewide home palliative care program.

CANCER sufferers will have access to specialist nurses to guide them through treatment and support services under a $15 million Labor health plan. The 34 cancer care nurse co-ordinators will be stationed in state and territory health centres across Australia, with a focus on the bush and indigenous communities.

The nursing union has raised public safety concerns about the increasing number of unregistered and unregulated health workers in the ACT. The Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation (ANWF) says figures show a dramatic jump in nursing assistants in ACT Health, private hospitals, and the aged care sector.

South Australian nurses hope a raft of measures will be introduced to tackle chronic overcrowding in the emergency departments of two public Adelaide hospitals. Flinders Medical Centre nurses have endorsed plans to reduce elective admissions, fast track bed turnover and other longer-term measures in the wake of crisis talks between the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation (SA Branch), SA Health and local managers.

A new 24 hour home palliative care program has been launched in Tasmania. Tasmanian not-for-profit community nursing organisation The District Nurses will receive $38 million over the next three years to run a statewide home palliative care program.

More than 60 allied health professionals and nurses will be employed as stroke care coordinators across Australia, under a re-elected Labor government. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has announced $50 million to create a national network of stroke care coordinators by 2017.

WESTERN Australia is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars flying in surgeons, nurses and doctors from as far away as Oman to cover shifts in remote and rural areas. A parliamentary report reveals that in the last three months of 2012, travel expenses were paid 185 times for medical staff to fly in from Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, New Zealand and on one occasion Oman. The flights cost taxpayers more than $340,000.

A large number of lower-qualified nursing staff across Australia are not overseen by the national medical watchdog and their numbers are increasing, reports show. Nursing federation ACT secretary Jenny Miragaya has called for assistants in nursing to come under the scrutiny of the same board that looks over qualified nurses.

Doctors say a deal between SA Health and the nurses' union does not address a growing need for more healthcare resources and infrastructure. The Nursing and Midwifery Federation has reached an agreement with the department to ease overcrowding at the Flinders Medical Centre.

The nurses' union and SA Health have agreed to implement plans aimed at easing chronic overcrowding in the Flinders Medical Centre's emergency department. The Nursing and Midwifery Federation says its members have endorsed the measures, which include reducing elective admissions and increasing bed turnover.