When you visit as many aged care facilities as often as I do, you would think that nothing would be a surprise and that after so many years I would always know what to expect. Not so. This week’s 🧵…
Constantly surprised to walk in to a facility in the middle of a weekday where there are more than 100 residents over three levels, to find that there is only one single RN and a single EN on each shift for the entire facility.
Totally surprised to be told that this is their new standard rostering. No wonder registered nurses are leaving in droves.
How on earth can this still be allowed after a Royal Commission that exposed so many failings? All it take is one acutely unwell resident or one fall, for the other 99 to not get their essential medications on time or for critical care interventions to be missed.
How can one RN provide the mandated minutes of direct nursing care every day to over 100 residents? How can one RN keep on top of schedule 8 meds, complex wound dressings, catheters and tracheostomy care, not to mention rounding with visiting GPs or allied health professionals?
How can one RN supervise an EN and all the care workers to make sure residents have been given the personal care they need and deserve?
How can one RN communicate with families, make sure pathology is collected, scripts are obtained, medication charts are correctly completed and signed, care plans are updated?
Add to the mix one or two residents who are at end of life and requiring a high level of assessment and frequent injectable medicines, repositioning and oral care. Who provides any level of support and reassurance to the families sitting vigil at the bedside? #PalliativeCare
If this is the standard during the day when the ACQS could walk in for a spot visit at any time, I hate to think what happens at night.
Nurses are leaving in droves because their work conditions are truly horrific, they are so run off their feet they cannot provide safe care and their registration is therefore on the line.
Enterprise agreements in many facilities/providers have expired and have not been renewed for years. No pay rises. No improvement in conditions. Exhausted, disillusioned and disgusted nurses are walking away because the grass elsewhere is definitely greener.
We urgently need the new industrial relations legislation to be passed in the Senate.
@DavidPocock I would love to meet you & tell you what is happening in aged care across your own city right now so that you understand just how vital this legislation is. @AnikaWells @anmf_federal @Mark_Butler_MP @AgedCareC @AgedCareQuality @AgedMatters @PCACEO @AbutlerAnnie
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