Where are the nurses

In the avalanche of media releases in the last couple of weeks about health, where are the nurses? Were we mentioned in the workforce announcement -no. Were we mentioned in the aged care strategy -no. Were we mentioned in the primary health care organisations announcement-no. Maybe the emergency department announcements- again no.

You would be forgiven for thinking nurses are a minority player in the health system - not 55% of the total health workforce. Even in our space of primary health care, there are over 10,000 more nurses than GPs if you look at the nurses in domiciliary care, maternal child health, school nurses, sexual health, family planning etc, as well as the 9000 practice nurses.

Why are nurses so invisible? Is it something in the type of people attracted to nursing that we don't like conflict, are more interested in caring and being part of a team than agitating. Obviously nurses by and large do not hold the vested business interests in health care that other groups such as medicos and phamarcists and even allied health professionals do?

More importantly, why does the medical profession hold such sway? The current federal labour government has been far more even-handed in its approach to health professional groups than the previous government (every time we raised a practice nursing issue under the previous government the stock response was to go and ask the AMA what they thought - and adopt that as the policy) but the recent announcements have reverted to form. Do medical groups have so much sway over state premiers that they need to be appeased to get these reforms across the line?? We are fully supportive of the measures to increase GP workforce which are long overdue but the nursing workforce is ageing faster than the medical workforce and the attrition rate is higher, often because of working conditions. Where is the nursing workforce of the future going to come from?

We have been commenting on announcements and entering the debate, despite not being recognised as key players in primary health care. We look forward to mroe announcements which will reassure us that the health reform proposals place nursing at the forefront of a genuine attempt to deliver better quality primary health care to more people in need using taxpayer dollars most efficiently.