Nurses at Tasmania's biggest public hospital are threatening to go on strike next week as the state's health service faces increasing pressure from a surge in COVID cases.
On Monday, the Royal Hobart Hospital was operating at level four of its escalation plan, triggered when too many patients in the emergency department cannot be admitted to the hospital due to a lack of beds.
Gracie Patten is the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation (ANMF) delegate for the Children and Adolescent Ward and says staff on that ward have been directed to prepare to admit patients aged up to 25 years old instead of 18.
"I think we have three adult blood pressure cuffs on that ward. Obviously, they'll stock us up, but it just adds extra pressure onto our staff."
Health Department secretary Kathrine Morgan-Wicks said the hospital was taking action to free up beds and improve patient flow as it faced higher demand for services and high levels of staff absence due to COVID.
"We are also working with residential aged care facilities to ensure they accept residents back as soon as they are medically ready to be discharged, to increase bed capacity."
The general operations escalation plan is different to the COVID-19 Escalation Management Level.
All of Tasmania's major public hospitals are already at level three of their COVID escalation management plans, meaning elective surgeries are being reviewed and may be postponed.
On Sunday, the government issued a press release stating "virtual visits" were "preferred", with those seeking to visit friends and family in hospital asked to contact them by phone or by video call instead.
Face masks must be worn in all Tasmanian healthcare facilities.
COVID pressure increases
On Monday, 166 public hospital patients had COVID, and 44 were being treated specifically for COVID.
Four people died from COVID during the reporting period — three men aged in their 70s and a woman in her 90s — Tasmania's highest daily death toll from COVID so far.
There were more than 10,000 active cases, with another 1,411 reported on Monday.
There are 117 health staff around Tasmania who are currently absent due to COVID and 11 outbreaks in hospitals.
On top of that, the ANMF said there was a national and international shortage of nurses.
ANMF Tasmanian executive director Andrew Brakey said Tasmanian nurses were exhausted.
"It's just become the norm that there is one staff member down on a night shift, which means there are eight to 10 patients which need to be spread across the remaining nurses on that shift."
Strike action threatened
The union is demanding the state government review nurses' wages, which it said are the lowest in Australia and make it hard to recruit and retain nurses.
It also wants clinical coaches on every ward to support new nurses.
Mr Brakey said unless the government agreed to those measures, union members would begin rolling strike action at the Royal Hobart Hospital on Wednesday next week and would strike at other hospitals in coming weeks.
The strike action would last for about 30 minutes and would take place during a time that there was twice the normal number of nurses at the hospital during a shift changeover.
"What our members want in front of them is a plan that will set their minds at ease that there will be appropriate staffing in the future, that the THS and the government are listening to what they've got to say and are willing to sit down and talk about what is needed."
A government spokesperson said the Department of Health was committed to resolving the workload concerns raised by the ANMF, and Premier and Health Minister Jeremy Rockliff recently met with ANMF state secretary Emily Shepherd to discuss union members' concerns.
"An agreement has been reached with unions including the ANMF to pay health employees after 30 consecutive days of their health facility experiencing pandemic escalation level 3 or above."
Tasmanian Labor Leader Rebecca White said the Tasmanian government had failed to support health workers during the latest wave of COVID.
