Doing it tougher than most…

Aged care nurses in rural and remote communities work longer hours than their city counterparts, and miss out on the huge incentives received by rural doctors.

Doctors and nurses in rural and remote Australia are doing it tough, but aged and community care nurses in rural and remote communities do it much tougher, the Australian Nursing Federation (ANF) said.

Two newly released reports from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) have indicated that nurses in very remote and remote areas worked almost four times the national average.

According to the ANF, the situation is worse for aged care nurses who work longer hours, on average, than nurses in acute care.

“We know that aged care [organisations] in regional and remote Australia have great difficulty in attracting nurses to work for them,” said ANF assistant federal secretary, Yvonne Chaperon.

“A lot of that has got to do with nurses not getting the same remuneration as in acute care, their workloads are much heavier and there is an issue with skill mix. That makes it hard to attract and retain nurses to aged care.”

Data from the AIHW, also reported that between 2004 and 2008, the average age of a nurse increased from 43.3 years to 44.1 years.

“Nurses in aged care are older than nurses and midwifes in acute care, with the average age being 50-55 years old,” she said.

“That means that as they approach retirement, we are to have a huge shortage in aged care if we don’t get younger nurses in that sector.”

The reports also highlighted that nurses, not doctors, are providing the bulk of healthcare in regional and remote areas. Yet a gulf exists in the level of support they are given compared to doctors who take up employment in those locations.

Ms Chaperon said that the incentives to attract doctors to rural and remote locations are vast in comparison to what is offered to nurses, specifically aged care nurses.

“Doctors get huge incentives, [something like] $147 000 a year, plus relocation costs. In some cases nurses do get relocation costs but it is only a couple of thousand of dollars… There is a huge gap and if we are going to take the shortage of nurses in aged care in rural and remote areas seriously then we need to be serious about the incentives offered to attract them.”

ANF federal secretary, Lee Thomas, said that rural Australians deserve the same healthcare options as everyone else and an incentives program would boost numbers of nurses in those communities.

“Why should someone in a regional or remote setting be forced to drive long distances or wait for weeks to see a GP when they could potentially have access to a highly experienced nurse or midwife?,” said Ms Thomas.

“We are calling on the federal government to support the nursing and midwifery workforce that provides healthcare to such a wide range of remote communities and to help boost access to healthcare by attracting more nurses.”


 

Tags: aged-care, australia, australian-institute-of-health-and-welfare-aihw, australian-nursing-federation, remote-and-rural,

Leave a Reply