Australian Nursing Federation (Victorian Branch) Secretary Lisa Fitzpatrick said: "We particularly welcome the announcement that health funding will go into a state pool, rather than go directly to hospital networks, ensuring more transparent spending and accountability.
"Since the Prime Minister announced his health reform plan on 3 March, ANF (Victorian Branch) has argued that the State Government must retain state coordination of health services and we are pleased that this is the outcome of yesterday's agreement," Ms Fitzpatrick said.
"One funding pool combined with state coordination will ensure industrial stability for nurses and midwives. This means when ANF (Victorian Branch) starts negotiating the next year's enterprise agreement and beyond we know we won't be negotiating hospital by hospital. ANF will also have certainty that we'll be negotiating with a State Government able to fund the enterprise agreement outcome whether that's increased nurses' and midwives' wages or improved nurse patient ratios," she said.
"We're very pleased about the additional beds and services and improved patient waiting times but we still require more detail about how many more nurses will be required and how they will be recruited," she said.
"The increase in Victoria's sub-acute beds is a classic example of this - we are already looking at the need to improve the inadequate nurse patient ratios in rehabilitation nursing and now we're looking at an increase in the service - where are the extra nurses going to come from?" she said.
"Further nursing announcements will need to explain the additional nursing workforce requirements, improved staffing levels, increased university places and funding for Division 1 nurses, increased TAFE training places and funding for Division 2 nurses and recruitment incentives," Ms Fitzpatrick said.
