21/3/03
Health Minister Bob Kucera today announced a new initiative to reduce Western Australia's reliance on private nursing agencies.
'Nurse West', a central pool of nurses, is designed to improve quality and care standards in public hospitals and ensure permanent staff receive greater levels of support.
"'Nurse West' is a unique public sector nursing pool that will supply staff to public hospitals and health services," Mr Kucera said.
"Experienced nurses are in constant demand to meet staffing requirements and are essential to deliver consistent quality care to patients.
"'Nurse West' is a single point of entry for temporary staff wanting to work in public hospitals and health services.
"While agency nurses may receive a higher hourly rate of pay, they do so at the expense of conditions including sick leave, paternity leave, annual leave, long service leave, study leave, access to union leave, access to scholarships, professional development and training."
The Minister said a key benefit of 'Nurse West' to the State health system would flow from finally tackling the exorbitant fees paid to a middle man - the agencies.
Last year, hospitals and health services spent $29million on agency staff.
"That is money that could have gone into building a permanent workforce to improve frontline services for patients," Mr Kucera said.
"The growing use of agencies has been a wasteful use of precious health dollars."
In addition to the benefits of existing enterprise agreements, nurses working in the public sector have the opportunity to:
- access training and development programs;
- become an active member of the team;
- engage in flexible work arrangements;
- make a choice of clinical nursing preferences; and
- achieve professional goals.
The establishment of 'Nurse West' will mean that health services will no longer be able to deal directly with agencies. 'Nurse West' will become the single point of contact to engage agency staff if needed - ultimately building in a transparency that has never previously existed.
The development of a draft generic nursing agency agreement will be issued to the nursing agencies today for a period of consultation.
"We have already commenced and will continue to monitor the use of agency nurses in the health services as we build our 'Nurse West' resources," Mr Kucera said.
The State Government is committed to supporting the nursing profession as demonstrated by the many initiatives already implemented.
"Since coming to Government, our strategies have resulted in 361 nurses re-entering the workforce through funded re-entry programs and we are on track to meet our commitment of 450 additional nurses," the Minister said.
For more information, phone 'Nurse West' on 1800 00 44 18 or visit
http://www.nursing.health.wa.gov.au Minister's office: 9213 7000
