The Nurses Return to Work in Hospitals initiatives will be launched by Ballarat East MP Geoff Howard at the ANF (Victorian Branch) Nurses Return to Work in Hospitals Conference.
The initiatives provide best practice guides, solutions and practical tools for injured and ill nurses, their employers, their medical practitioners and other stakeholders to improve return to work outcomes. They focus on identifying what nurses can do, rather than what they cannot do, and are aimed at supporting the nurse or midwife to return or remain working in a clinical capacity with patients following an injury or illness. Where this is not possible, the program focuses on rehabilitation and provides career resources to identify a range of alternative nursing role opportunities.
Victorian nurses and midwives suffered more than 8000 compensated work injuries and illnesses between 2000 and 2007 costing Victorian taxpayers, health employers and individual nurses and midwives millions of dollars each year. The most experienced and skilled nurses and midwives, aged between 34 to 54 years, represented 64 per cent of those injuries.
The Nurses Return to Work in Hospitals Project is the first comprehensive investigation into the process of what happens to injured and ill nurses who try to return to work in hospitals and has already received interest from nursing organisations and employers across Australia and internationally.
The initiatives are the result of the three-year project, funded by the WorkSafe Victoria's RTW Fund, to identify barriers to and factors for the successful return to work of nurses and midwives who are injured or ill through work in hospitals. ANF conducted the project in partnership with the employer representative, the Victorian Hospitals' Industrial Association, and with the support of the Injured Nurses Support Group and occupational physician Dr Helen Sutcliffe.
Ballarat Health Services was involved in a nine-month return to work pilot program during 2008 and 2009 that was conducted in five public and private hospitals across metropolitan, regional and rural Victoria.
Regional nurses participating in the pilot program reported difficulty accessing rehabilitation services, a greater lack of resources and expertise within smaller regional hospitals to deal effectively and proactively with return to work and more limited return to work duties and employment opportunities for injured nurses.
ANF (Victorian Branch) Secretary Lisa Fitzpatrick said: "The union's done a lot of work to reduce and prevent nurses' injuries through the introduction of the no manual lifting policy and strategies to reduce violence and aggression against nurses, workplace bullying and stress. This new program is just as innovative because the emphasis is on what a nurse can do when returning to work and on retaining nurses within the profession.
"No one had any data, but anecdotally everyone knew injured and ill nurses were facing enormous challenges returning to work and that hospitals were losing highly skilled clinicians," Ms Fitzpatrick said.
"Until now an injured nurse or midwife would lodge a claim for workers compensation and participate in return to work with limited knowledge of their entitlements and without understanding their rights and responsibilities within the system," Ms Fitzpatrick said.
"No one has wanted to give this information to injured nurses or midwives out of fear that they will want to claim the entitlement. This exacerbates and reinforces the financial impact of the injury on the employer. The injured nurse is given non-nursing tasks, such as filing and answering phones, and believes they have no value in the workplace which can have a demoralising effect." she said.
"Relegating a skilled and experienced nurse to paperwork or letting them leave nursing all together is a waste of skilled nurses and a waste of money and during a worldwide nurse shortage there is absolutely no excuse for it.
"These initiatives are the start of a major cultural shift within the health industry with everyone from the bottom up looking at what an injured or ill nurse can do. This will significantly reduce the number of highly skilled and experienced nurses who are lost to the profession each year when the reality is that with support they can still be productive members of the clinical team," Ms Fitzpatrick said.
The initiatives are based on formal and informal consultation with injured nurses and their colleagues, nurse unit managers, directors of nursing, hospital executives and insurance agencies, about what was happening and what needed to happen to make the process of returning to work better for the individual nurse, the workplace and the employer.
WorkSafe's Greg Tweedly said WorkSafe's Return to Work Fund was created to encourage and support collaboration between employer and worker groups, and workplace parties, to increase return to work opportunities for injured Victorian workers.
Media opportunity
When: Monday 23 November 2009, 9am -10am first session
What: Ballarat East MP Geoff Howard will launch the new Nurses Return to Work in Hospitals initiatives at the ANF (Victorian Branch) Nurses Return to Work Conference
Where: The Mecure Ballarat Hotel and Convention Centre
