Public Sector Updates – North West

Safe Staffing Committee Meeting

The ANMF on behalf of members attend the Safe Staffing Committee meetings held every 3 months with Tasmanian Health Service management. The ANMF had recreation leave included as an agenda item for discussion at the December meeting. Access to recreational leave and excess recreational leave appears to be of concern in more than one area due in part to the cancelling or postponing of leave in 2020. Nurse Unit Managers (NUM’s) are working through this to ensure roster coverage whilst accommodating leave requests where possible. Recreation leave will be discussed at the Nursing and Midwifery Executive Committee in the New Year. The next Safe Staffing Committee meeting will be held on 2 March 2021.

District Hospitals Smithton, King Island and HealthWest

Funding for the District Hospital Workload model has been confirmed for 12 months. The ANMF would like to establish connections to work collaboratively to ensure that the trial is well informed and meets the needs for safe staffing and workloads at each site. We understand that many of the Model of Care working party representatives are from the North, with the North West representative who provided the original briefing now retired. Time elapsed since the inception of this work has seen changes to Nurse Unit Managers (NUM’s) and/or Director of Nursing (DON’s) at some of the District Hospitals as well as the ANMF North West Organiser. Formal correspondence has been sent requesting data to inform the trial following which a meeting will be arranged. You can read the latest email update to members here.

Smithton District Hospital

Following advice that the District Hospitals Workload model has been funded for 12 months, the ANMF have sent formal correspondence to the Director of Nursing (DON) at the Smithton District Hospital seeking confirmation that the Clinical Nurse Consultant (CNC) role will be rostered in-direct. You can read the latest email update sent to members here.

North West Renal Unit

ANMF officials met with members at the North West Renal Unit to discuss the current benchmarking. The 2020 benchmarking as presented identifies that an additional Full Time Equivalent (FTE) of 2.98 is required. During this meeting, members formally endorsed the benchmarking. Read the latest update sent to members via email here.

North West Regional Hospital Emergency Department

ANMF officials met with members on 25 November, where concerns were raised regarding recreational leave access. Subsequently these concerns have been raised with Emergency Department Management and at the Safe Staffing Committee Meeting. Read the latest update sent to members via email here.

Updates correct as at 10 December 2020.
Authorised by Emily Shepherd, ANMF Tasmanian Branch Secretary