The ideas that nursing has been historically undervalued and is getting more complex form the basis for a fresh push to increase nurse and midwife pay across all work settings, including general practice.
The “invisible” work of nurses across general practice settings has gone undervalued for too long, the nurses’ union is arguing as part of its case to increase the minimum rates for all classifications under the Nurses Award 2020.
Registered nurses and midwives working in general practice are just one of the groups represented by the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation, which is currently running the work value case in front of the Fair Work Commission.
The union has already successfully argued for a similar raise for nurses and personal care workers in Australia’s aged care system, which resulted in minimum award rate increases of 15% to 30%.
If successful in this current case, nurses employed by general practices will draw a higher minimum wage.
Hearings on the matter commenced in Melbourne last week.
A lengthy report commissioned by the ANMF’s legal team and included in the digital hearing book argued that the “confident, fluent performance” and background nature of skills like managing the hierarchical relationships between doctors and balancing competing interests can lead to nurses being “under-recognised … taken for granted and … omitted from duty statements or classification standards”.
“… Issues include the lack of recognition of both the extensive development of nursing and midwifery skills ‘on the job’, and through the extensive ongoing learning (formal and informal) that nurses and midwives undertake that is not credentialled,” report author Dr Lisa Heap wrote.
“I have identified the impact of significant contextual factors on how work is performed and how these factors impact on the skills, effort and responsibilities involved in nursing and midwifery in Australia. These factors include: the further development of person-centred care (nurses) and continuity of care models (midwives) which require extensive contextualising, connecting, and coordinating skills from nurses and midwives.
“There is also the increasing complexity and diversity of the Australian community and their health needs, which intensifies the skills needed for care and places further demands on nurses and midwives.”
A spokesperson for the Australian College of Nursing told The Medical Republic that primary care nurses are now the lowest paid in Australia.
“There is minimal dedicated funding for nursing work in general practice and other primary care settings,” they said.
“In reality, much of the cost of nursing care is likely carried by patients themselves through gap payments.”
They called the ANMF work value case “extremely important” for the healthcare system as a whole.
“Nursing care is fundamental to preventive and primary healthcare, which is vital to reducing expensive preventable hospitalisations,” the spokesperson said.
“The healthcare system needs to reorient in recognition of this – enabling nurses to work to the top of their scope, and funding them properly to do it.”
Multiple peak bodies requested more funding for nurses in general practice as part of this year’s budget.
None was given.
“The college urges the government to ensure that funding for nursing in general practice keeps pace with any wages outcome,” the nursing college spokesperson said.
