The Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation (ANMF) has welcomed a Review into the aged care sector’s regulatory systems recently announced by Federal Aged Care Minister Ken Wyatt.
“We obviously welcome the Review into the sector’s regulatory processes, but any investigation into care failures must dig deeper. It must examine how the lack of qualified nursing staff is regularly resulting in missed care for patients,” ANMF Federal Secretary Lee Thomas said.
“The ANMF’s own research shows that nursing home residents should be receiving an average of more than 4 hours of care a day – but currently, they’re only receiving 2.84 hours a day.
“To ensure safe residential care, there should also be a minimum skills mix of Registered Nurses (RN) 30%, Enrolled Nurses (EN) 20% and Personal Care Worker (PCA) 50%.
“Again, that’s not happening, which is why we are seeing increasing numbers of missed care episodes in nursing homes across the country.
“Our members working in aged care are finding their ability to deliver quality care, harder and harder to achieve, due to dangerously high workloads and inadequate staffing levels. And it’s patients who are suffering.”
Ms Thomas said the number of people using in permanent residential aged care services was now up to 234,931 with another 56,852 in respite residential aged care but consecutive Governments have failed to legislate minimum staffing ratios for the sector.
