the 46th patricia chomley memorial oration 2012 - Royal College of ...

I was again reminded of this analysis very recently by two newspaper articles, one in a nationalpaper 32 and one in our daily state paper. 33 These articles were reporting on the projected shortfall inthe number of nursing and medical practitioners by 2025 based on modelling undertaken by HealthWorkforce Australia:34 109 000 nurses and 2700 doctors. Despite the significantly larger problemlooming with nurse supply, both articles allocated a number of column inches to the AMA’s responseto the report with no comments included from any nursing organisation, although the WA AMA didrefer to the impact the nursing shortage would have on health services. Did the newspapers notconsider seeking a response from a nursing organisation or make use of media releases, or did adecision have to be made to not use the response given space available? Whatever the reason, themessage to the reader is that what we have to be really concerned about is the supply of doctors;nurse supply fades into the background. As an aside, I did find the report’s focus on nurse retentionmeasures as the primary strategy for reducing this gap somewhat comforting; for once the solutiondoesn’t appear to be focused on significantly increasing intakes, although no doubt there willbe some pressure there. That is not to say retention will be an easy issue to address to the extentrequired – it too comes with its own unique challenges and need for some radical changes in thework environment.However we need to remember that there a number of ways of acting politically which don’t involvewearing a red vest, waving placards and marching down the main street. Although we know thatpart of the role of our professional organisations is to lobby, we probably don’t appreciate just howmuch time and effort goes into that activity. A recent success was the amount of additional fundingproposed for increased salaries for nurses in the aged care sector in the Australian Government’sresponse Living Longer, Living Better 35 to the Productivity Commission’s report Caring for OlderAustralians. 36 We did of course have very vocal support from the aged and their families on that score.Another area where significant political activity goes on, although those involved could never admitto this, is in the chief nurses’ offices in health departments. From what I have observed, without thisbackroom work, bringing the nurse practitioner concept to fruition might not have been achieved.Yet another activity that could be classed as political activity is individual nurses talking purposelyabout what their practice entails, in order to raise the public’s and politicians’ understanding of ourrole and responsibilities.So, back to our symbolic ‘hut’, “what contributions have we made that we can place in there for thefuture of nursing in this country?” I suggest the following; you can add to these:• Education as opposed to training• Adaptation, adoption and application of evidence to inform our practice.12 RCNA The 46th Patricia Chomley Memorial Oration 2012