Page 2442 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 30 July 2019
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walk-in centres provide to the community every day. It would indeed be a miracle mum who could stitch a wound or treat a simple fracture, mastitis or an eye infection with bandaids and antiseptic.
As I mentioned in question time, the work of the walk-in centres continues to expand, with the recent addition of the management of dental pain. Madam Deputy Speaker, I think that here we may be on a unity ticket. We would like to see the work of the walk-in centres expand and to see nurse practitioners being able to use more of their skills for the benefit of the community.
Madam Deputy Speaker, I encourage you to talk with Wendy, one of the nurses I met at the Belconnen walk-in centre, who has been working across the centres since they opened five years ago, who has seen many patients come and go, and who understands the genuine value that she and her colleagues provide to the community. Canberrans respect and value the work of nurses in our walk-in centres, and it is time that the Canberra Liberals started doing so as well.
In complete contrast to the Canberra Liberals, the ACT government will continue to support nurses across our entire system. We are committed to ensuring that nurses have the resources available to support their practice. ACT Health, for example, offers a variety of nursing and midwifery scholarships, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander enrolled nursing scholarships, through CIT; postgraduate nursing and midwifery scholarships; travel scholarships to assist nurses and midwives to present at relevant national and international conferences; and many more. These opportunities ensure that the government can assist those with ambitions to enter the nursing profession to realise that ambition, and help nurses continuously develop their skills and share their research with their colleagues.
As Mr Rattenbury has spoken about, late last year the government released the nurses and midwives towards a safer culture strategy, to improve workplace health and safety for nurses. As I said in question time, it is the right of every worker to work in a workplace where they are safe from bullying, harassment and occupational violence, and where workplace stress is minimised. This is what the nurses and midwives towards a safer culture strategy aims to achieve. The 2019-20 budget has committed over $1.2 million over four years to implementing the first step of the strategy. Together with the comprehensive recommendations of the independent review into workplace culture within ACT public health services, this strategy has provided the government with a clear direction on how to improve workplace culture for those that work in public health services, including our nursing staff.
In the coming weeks, I will be chairing my first culture review oversight group meeting, where employee representatives assist ministers, the Director-General of ACT Health and the CEO of Canberra Health Services, and the regional CEO of Calvary ACT, in ensuring that the review recommendations are implemented in full. I want to reiterate the government’s commitment to addressing the issues outlined in the review, and I look forward to providing further updates to the Assembly and the community as the work of the culture review oversight group continues.
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