Right now in Tasmania, patients are being cared for in corridors. Ambulances are queuing inside and outside emergency departments. Nurses and midwives are being forced to choose who waits — not because they aren’t working hard enough, but because the system is broken.

This isn’t about staff performance. It’s about a system starved of beds, workforce and investment for too long.

What’s the problem?

Access and flow failures are system failures — NOT staff failures.

• The front door is jammed. EDs are overwhelmed because there’s nowhere for patients to go.
• The wards are full. Beds are blocked by patients who need them, or patients who are well enough to leave but have nowhere safe to go — no aged care, no subacute, no home support, no transport afterhours.
• The back door is stuck. Patients can’t be discharged, so beds don’t free up, so ambulances can’t offload, so the next patient waits.
• The people holding it together are running out. Nurses and midwives are carrying impossible loads and paying for it in moral distress and burnout.
• No safe dedicated space for mental health admissions. EDs are not the place for patients with mental health conditions to be when they are experiencing an exacerbation of their symptoms or condition.

The Solutions (what ‘fixed’ looks like)

 We’re not just naming the problem. Here’s what Tasmania needs:

• Safe staffing ratios legislated — enforced, so no nurse or midwife is ever set up to fail.
  • Perhaps its time to stand with Victoria, Queensland, NSW, SA & WA and legislate ratios and count the babies?
• More beds in the right places — aged care, subacute and Hospital in the Home to unblock the wards.
  • Perhaps its time for Public Sector Aged Care beds like other states?
• Real discharge coordination — so patients leave safely and beds free up. Nursing Practitioners can assist Doctors in discharge planning.
  • Perhaps its time to staff district hospitals to their available beds, to provide care to people in their communities and telehealth?
• Investment in the workforce — recruit, retain and support the nurses and midwives who keep Tasmanians alive. Nurses and Midwives are leaving the State and profession in droves as the current reliance on overtime, double shifts and working short staffed is becoming a daily occurrence.
  • Perhaps its time to invest in Tasmanian Nurses and Midwives and move them from being the lowest paid? [Grd 3 Y8]

Perhaps its time the Tasmanian Government responsibly invested in our health system.

No more excessive spending on temporary staffing to plug gaps that never close. No more nurses and midwives working double shifts on a daily basis just to keep wards/units safe. No more patients waiting in corridors because there’s no bed to move them to. No more treating a workforce crisis as someone else’s problem.

No more pretending the money isn’t there and, it’s being spent in all the wrong places.

No more band-aids. We all deserve better.