Page 1839 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 8 June 2022
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broken down and the elements include the supernumerary team leader compliance; the one-to-four and one-to-six ratios, noting that the high dependency unit in mental health is actually a one-to-two ratio; and the 75-to-25 skill mix. It is also broken down between the adult mental health unit, general medical wards, general surgical wards and acute aged care wards. It identifies some common themes where compliance has not been achieved—being unplanned leave and COVID impact—and the supernumerary team leader, which was significantly lower than the other elements, but I would note that in the general medical wards the supernumerary team leader ratio compliance was 100 per cent. In the acute aged care wards, the supernumerary team leader ratio compliance was 100 per cent. In adult mental health the supernumerary team leader was 97 per cent. In the general surgical wards it was only 72 per cent. There was also 100 per cent compliance on general surgical wards with the 75 to 25 ratio skill mix, and the rest of the figures are between 80 and 90 per cent.
I table that for the information of the Assembly. If Ms Castley had asked for that information, we would have been happy to provide it. We are happy to continue to work through that working group and with the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation on how we can improve that compliance reporting and what we report publicly.
I acknowledge the point Mr Daniel has made that this is only point-in-time reporting. What is currently being reported on is whether the roster is being appropriately filled—that is, whether the roster is reflecting the requirements of ratios—and what is happening at the start of shifts. But we recognise that there are strains and pressures on our health system at this point in time. There has been unplanned leave, as was identified in the document that I have just tabled, and there is sometimes the need for nurses to be redistributed to address some of the very serious pressures across our hospital systems. That can result in noncompliance with ratios through the time of a shift.
We absolutely recognise that that is an ongoing challenge, not just a challenge for the ACT. As we know, Ms Castley read out some of the headlines in relation to the ACT system, but those headlines are appearing in newspapers right around the country, because every single health service across Australia—and, indeed, health services around the world—are under pressure at the moment for various reasons. In Australia it is partly because of COVID and partly because of flu and the winter season. Partly it is because our healthcare workforce has been under such pressure that we have seen people leave. But across our workforce we have seen more people recruited than we have seen leave. Canberra Health Services, in particular, has been very clear that when people have planned leave—when people have annual leave that they have planned to take—that it is able to be taken. That is really important in terms of caring for our staff.
Ms Castley talked about the fact that the implementation of nurse-patient ratios was a 2020 election commitment by ACT Labor and the ACT Greens—it was not a commitment of the Canberra Liberals; she did not mention that part—but that has taken some time to come to fruition. As Ms Castley identified, it was funded in the 2021-22 budget, with $50 million to recruit 90 full-time equivalent nurses. The recruitment was not of midwives; we have not done ratios for midwives yet, but we
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