@lyndal1838 wrote:
@brerrabbit585 wrote:
If they got really desperate there are also plenty of nurses who are no longer registered but who could easily assist.
My sister in law was registered at the time of chameleon's figures but decided not to renew it in November.
She would show as recently deregistered but at the age of 75 I doubt she would be willing or able to work 12 hour shifts.
The graphs on the Nurses and Midwifery board site also give a break down of the age of registered nurses. It is only a very small demographic who are aged in their seventies and for each one that drops out due to age, there are young trainees coming through. Another nugget I came across from 2014 showed that in that year around 35% of nursing graduates where not able to find employment in their chosen field of nursing. ie. we have many more successful nursing graduates than placements.
My posts regards nurses relate to a much earlier post on this thread asking " how would we staff any extra emergency facilities opened to handle the COVID-19 cases ". My response that there where " tens of thousands " of nurses and doctors specifically related to those who where currently working, but under - employed ( part time ), of which I gave two examples. One my sister, another my GP, both working around 20 hours or less per week, as lifestyle choices.
The figures quoted in an earlier post show that well over half of all nurses are currently working part time with around 170,000 working less than 34 hours per week. By cancelling all planned leave for existing staff we immediately get a 10% increase in medical staffing capacity. By requesting ( or compelling ) existing part time staff to work full time ( 40 hours per week ) we get another 20 - 25% increase in staffing. While this is inconvenient for some, it gives a 30% - 35% increase in staffing without venturing into unreasonable or unsafe staffing practices and hourly shifts that are out of line with other full time employees.
If we then tap into the very large pool of medical proffesionals who are currently not part of the medical work force ( like the 35% of recent nursing graduates that are not currently employed in nursing ) we have greater flexibility to staff emergency facilities. Many of these would be employed in alternate businesses that may be looking to give workers extended leave due to being effected by COVID-19 and some would jump at the chance of letting an employee have unpaid time off for a period of months Win Win.
My basic point is, there is extensive under-utilised capacity already built into the Australian medical professions which could be called upon in a crisis to increase staffing by perhaps 40% , without the need to go to the extreme measures of rolling 12 hour shifts.
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