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Royal Commission into aged care sector: nurses react
The government has decided to establish a Royal Commission into the aged care sector to address areas of concern regarding the quality and safety of services.
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This is like the ‘crisis we have to have!” One of the issues is – last Liberal Government wanted to do away with Registered Nurses altogether. The community thinks that all staff in Facilities are RN’s! There is not enough training for staff (care workers and RNs re Dementia) . Until we recognise – mandatory training for all staff in Acute Care, Community Care and Facilities re “Experiencing Dementia Training”, mandatory staff ratios (RN’s and AINs + MDT) we have come full circle in my view – we have wanted RACF to be more home like, we have the highest care needs of residents of all time and – Gov wants no RN’s – what do they expect really. The system is broken (and the community MAC & HCP providers) is not an easy system – heaven help you if you do not have a family to advocate for you. We have set up all these systems and we now need consultants to guide us through!!!
All very valid points – we are indeed dealing with our older people who are living at home longer & so care needs are much greater & much more complex by the time they require entry to residential care. It therefore follows that we need a higher skilled workforce to meet those needs – people leave their homes due to increased needs which are unable to be met at home and so we cannot equate residential care to home. It needs to be a center where people receive high quality, skilled care to meet their, often very complex, medical & nursing care needs on a 24 hr basis. The reality then, would be much less need for older people to be transferred to acute hospital for basic issues such as a urinary tract infection !!!!
Prior to 1997 there was specific Quarantined funding for care staff – then Proprietors were handed the bucket of money to provide ‘appropriate’ care – this has not worked as many operators do not understand the proper concepts of ‘assessment of need’…….it has been down hill from that point….
The current situation is most distressing for those of us who worked so hard to develop a system which worked so well …..
There does need to be staff to resident ratios implemented, to stop greedy propertiers and management treating the elderly like commodities even in Christian based organisations. There are very few Australian nurses in these facilities now where I live and they are underpaying cheap overseas labour, who won’t speak up until they get their citizenship. There are issues with cultural differences, poor communication and not doing the job for the right reasons (some are pushed into doing nursing by their parents) and then there is the issue of them taking not just one but quite often 2 jobs so they are too tired to do their jobs properly. Australians need work too. Wait until these overseas nurses learn that they can go to the Fair Work Commission to get their right rates of pay and they can be backpaid. Sean Rooney does not seem to realise that they most likely make him a special meal in a private facility, where image is everything and the level of care is poor. They would rather spend the money on the look of the facility rather than getting good staff. If he went to a Christian run organisation at night time chances are he would find that the residents are eating party pies that are full of air and very little meat. It made me laugh that even the particpants on the show “Google box” even though they are lay people realised Sean Rooney had no idea about what he was talking about.