Nurses victory

After nine days of industrial action more than 5000 public sector nurses have accepted a new agreement that maintains nurse patient ratios and improves nurse patient ratios in areas under pressure such as emergency departments and post- and ante-natal areas.

It has also been agreed that additional nurses will be employed in other areas under pressure in the Victorian health system such as aged care, palliative, geriatric evaluation (GEM) and management and smaller country hospitals.

Australian Nursing Federation (Victorian Branch) Secretary Lisa Fitzpatrick said: "This has been an unprecedented dispute that was unnecessarily exacerbated by the Brumby Government's enthusiastic embrace of the WorkChoices laws. This has been an extremely distressing time for nurses, their patients and the Victorian community with nurses forced to defend nurse patient ratios and to fight for reasonable and fair wages and employment conditions.

"This dispute was never just about the money, it was about staffing our hospitals safely by maintaining and improving nurse patient ratios so that nurses can provide safe patient care. Nurses are there when your children are born and they are there when you die. Nurses become nurses because they want to make a difference and care for the ill, the injured, the elderly and the frail. Only nurse patient ratios allow nurses to deliver this level of care and the Victorian community is the winner from this agreement.

"The ANF is confident that Victorians requiring care throughout the nine days of industrial action received that care. There should be no doubt, the level of care throughout the industrial action would have been higher had hospital administrators and executives focused on managing the impact of the bans rather than targeting and bullying individual nurses," she said.

"The ANF office has been overwhelmed by the community's support and we've been unable to respond to everyone individually. Thank you for every phone call, every fax, every email and every post on our campaign website which made us more determined to fight the Government to fund nursing properly," Ms Fitzpatrick said.

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