Organiser at the Australian Nurses and Midwives Federation NSW, Nola Scilinato said that the local committee had met September 22 and had put forward a number of resolutions to the hospital management.

“There is a proposal to open another ward, the sub-acute ward which has 12 beds on October 24 but the branch is not happy to see this open until there is full recruitment. The branch would also like to see the medical and surgical wards staffed and recruited for full occupancy.”

Ms Scilinato said that because there was “not very much of a casual pool to draw from” staffing needed to be at full complement. Currently staff are being asked to take on extra shifts.

“As there is no casual pool we would like to see an additional staff member rostered for each shift. We asked for this at the opening of the hospital,” Ms Scilinato said.

“We have also asked for more hours to be provided particularly for nursing admin support otherwise nurses end up taking on admin work as well.”

While Ms Scilinato said that SNSWLHD has agreed more nurses were needed, they were having trouble recruiting.

“We believe the recruitment process is cumbersome. A nurse can apply for a job and it can take three months or more before they are appointed. In the meantime they could be offered another job elsewhere,” she said.

“I don’t think we have the same problems as the Health Services Union (HSU) has because we have minimum staffing levels,” Ms Scilinato said but admitted there were still problems.

She said there was an expectation that numbers of patients would increase but that it would drop back after a couple of months.

This has not been the case, she said.

“No one expected the demand to be at the level it is at and it has been quite underestimated. They took into consideration the numbers from both the Bega and Pambula hospitals but numbers have exceeded that. It was thought it would drop off but numbers have been consistent,” Ms Scilinato said.