A 24-HOUR strike today is the clearest indication yet of just how seriously local nurses are taking threats to Bathurst Base Hospital.
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Nurses walked off the job from 7am today leaving just a skeleton staff to look after patients at the hospital. It is not an action they take lightly, but the strike shows just how frustrated they have become with attempts to negotiate with management over planned staffing and bed closures.
It is also a message to management that they expect to be treated better than they feel they have been over the past month or so.
When the local health district announced an independent review into the operations of Bathurst Base Hospital, nurses took that to mean there would be no changes before the review was completed.
So they were shocked to receive a memo from hospital general manager David Wright advising that five medical beds would close from Monday, December 9. Those bed closures were flagged at the time the independent review was announced but clearly that message wasn’t communicated well to the nurses.
It is also telling that today’s strike comes before a leaders’ forum organised by Bathurst MP Paul Toole and deputy mayor Ian North on Monday, and another community meeting organised by the nurses for later on the same day.
Clearly the nurses want to make a very public stand on these issues and there is no better way to get the public’s attention than to walk off the job. But they must tread warily in the battle for public support.
Right now the majority of the Bathurst community is right behind the nurses as the future of our hospital is as important to residents as it is to the staff.
But strike action always risks alienating the public by leaving the hospital short-staffed.
Nurses say patient care will not be compromised and the staff will be able to cater for anyone who presents today.
We dearly hope that’s the case, because it would be terrible to see that overwhelming public support for the nurses evaporate in 24 short hours.