Workers from across the health industry – from administration stuff to cleaners to security to paramedics – will today be standing as a united front against a lack of intervention into increasing incidents of assault and abuse while on the job. However, the state won’t be without medical support with paramedics still on the job and striking with their colleagues by refusing to bill patients.
For 4 hours today, 22,000 Health Service Union members will down tools but not before assessing all precautions “to prevent any impact on public health” says, Health Services Union NSW Secretary Gerard Hayes. “Paramedics will continue their revenue strike on the NSW government, declining to collect billing details for patients. Emergency services will not be affected.”
Earlier in the week, discussion between NSW Health and the HSU in the Industrial Relations Commission failed to come to an arrangement that would prevent industrial action. The Health Minister did offer trails of more thorough security measures at Wyong and Gosford hospitals, however Secretary Hayes described the trails as “baby steps”.
“Our strike is an unfortunate but necessary last resort. We have argued, lobbied and advocated for change for years, but our pleas continue to fall on deaf ears,” Secretary Hayes said. We are living through a hospital security crisis. Yet the Ministry of Health refuses to take anything more than baby steps.”
Before any further measures are implement to combat rising incidents of abuse, NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard is waiting for the final results of a Government report into the matter.
Secretary Hayes stated that in New South Wales hospitals alone, there are 40 assaults on staff each month with other stats indicating an alarming increase in incidents. “In the last three years, hospital workers have been stabbed, shot, punched, bitten and abused. Hospital workers are sick of being treated as punching bags.”
The government report into violence against health care professionals will be submitted in the final quarter of this year, as per SMH.
