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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2019-05-15 Daily Xml
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International Nurses and Midwives Days

The Hon. C.M. SCRIVEN (16:13): I move:

That this council—

1. Recognises both International Nurses Day and International Day of the Midwife;

2. Acknowledges that International Day of the Midwife 2019 is celebrated annually on 5 May worldwide;

3. Acknowledges that International Nurses Day 2019 is celebrated on 12 May worldwide; and

4. Sincerely thanks all nurses, midwives and care assistants for the important work they do in our communities, hospitals and homes.

In the past week, there have been two extremely important events. As I mentioned, on 5 May it was International Day of the Midwife. This day highlights the vital role that midwives play in the health and wellbeing of mothers, children and their families. The theme of the day was Midwives: Defenders of Women's Rights, celebrating and advocating for the many ways that midwives defend, protect and stand up for the rights of women, girls and midwives around the world.

Sunday, which was also Mother's Day, of course, was International Nurses Day. This day is celebrated on 12 May every year all around the world to commemorate the birth anniversary of Florence Nightingale and to mark nurses' contributions to people's health. The International Nurses Day theme was Nurses: A Voice to Lead—Health for All.

The 2019 SA Nursing and Midwifery Excellence Awards were held on Friday 10 May, with nurses and midwives acknowledged and celebrated for their exceptional contribution to their professions and their compassionate care for the South Australian community. I would like to congratulate all winners in those awards, but in particular Rachel Yates from Mount Gambier who received the Excellence in Leadership Award.

I thought I would take the opportunity to put on the record Rachel's story. Rachel told The Border Watch newspaper this week that she was humbled by the award and that she has had wonderful support, guidance and mentoring over the years. Her current role is the Country Health SA Advanced Midwife Manager, Maternal and Neonatal Services, in the Nursing and Midwifery Directorate where she supports best practice and perinatal service delivery across 20 birthing sites in Country Health SA. Ms Yates is also the executive officer for the Country Health SA Maternity Services Committee.

She is based at Mount Gambier and Districts Health Service where she has worked as a midwife for 18 years. Ms Yates has established country health midwifery forums for all midwives and service delivery leaders. The focus is to improve communication, collaboration, networking, engagement of midwives, professional learning and ensuring consistent and accurate advice is given. She sees her role as a clinical support for all midwives and leaders working in country health, maternal and neonatal services.

Her role requires a strategic approach to the governance, workforce capability, resource management, development of procedures, auditing and review, benchmarking and professional development. Ms Yates also monitors and supports compliance for safety and quality of maternal and neonatal services and for safe maternal and neonatal outcomes for women and families living in country South Australia.

Of course, that is the official description of her role. Any of us who have had the pleasure and honour of being involved with midwives knows what that really means in practice. Having had six children, I have had quite a deal of experience in this and have been very fortunate to have had excellent midwifery services and some wonderful women supporting me. In fact, at one stage, there was a sole male midwife in South Australia, who I think assisted with my first pregnancy.

We need to remember when we are talking about all the position descriptions, if you like, of the amazing midwives and other health services in our state that what that means is real people helping real people, and in this case real people helping real parents as they go through a huge and exciting and sometimes frightening time of their lives. Ms Yates says that she hopes that, moving forward, birthing sites will remain connected to support each other to deliver the best care to women and families in our country communities so that they can be as close to home safely with positive birth experiences.

South Australia's nurses and midwives are amongst the best in the world. Obviously, there are clinical differences between the services they deliver and the skill sets that midwives and nurses possess that also have a strong thread of commonality. It is the humanness, it is the care, the connector of ultimate best possible outcomes. I am told the world of the professional midwife is as interesting as it is challenging, rewarding and inspiring. It has been described like this:

The chance to assist women, families, in the birthing of their children at the most intimate time of life, the opportunity to provide love and reassurance to women with antenatal crises, and to undertake my work with very tiny babies watching on from their cots while newly anointed parents took a well-deserved rest, were some of the most special times in nursing for me. The role is privileged, satisfying and held in the utmost regard.

Nurses comprise the largest single component of hospital staff and other primary providers of hospital patient care. They deliver most of the care prescribed by and in consultation with physicians. Not only are nurses vital to patient care, they are also integral members of the research, administration and management team. I am sure that every one of us here would have at least one story, if not many stories, of excellent care provided by nurses known to them or to their families or friends.

However, not everyone has the same amount of respect for nurses and midwives. We know that without the proper resources, nurses and midwives cannot do their vital and important work. Therefore, it is necessary to consider the plans of the main parties ahead of Saturday's federal election because if we are to value the work of nurses and midwives, we need to ensure that they are properly resourced to be able to carry out that work.

In 2014, Tony Abbott's $50 billion budget cuts to health had a devastating impact on services for South Australians. Abbott's budget ripped $600 million from the South Australian health system over four years and, because of the Abbott government, at the end of those four years—which was 2018—South Australians lost the equivalent of 600 hospital beds. Tony Abbott's budget also cut Medicare Locals, slashing services like after-hours GPs, counselling, immunisation and Aboriginal health. That put more than 3,000 front-line health jobs at risk. The Liberals lied to South Australians when they said they would not cut health. Clearly, South Australians cannot trust the Liberals.

In contrast, a Shorten Labor government will invest more in every single hospital in the country with its $2.8 billion Better Hospitals Fund. In 2013 the Liberals promised there would be no cuts to hospitals, but in 2014 they cut funding from 50 per cent of the efficient price to 45 per cent. Labor's Better Hospitals Fund will reverse, in full, the government's unfair cuts to public hospitals and help reduce waiting times.

It will improve services in every hospital around the country. Labor's $2.8 billion Better Hospitals Fund will benefit every hospital and every patient in the country by restoring every cent of the core funding cut by the Liberals. That will mean more doctors, more nurses and more midwives, more hospital staff and more beds.

I understand that people often feel, in a motion such as this that honours nurses and midwives, that it is perhaps unwise to talk about the political aspects. Many times I would agree with that; however, on this occasion, as we are several days out from an election, we need to be realistic. We need to acknowledge the fact that whether a party has a major commitment to health care, as the Labor Party does, will affect the work that nurses and midwives can do. I can see some of those opposite groaning and shaking their heads—and indeed they should.

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order!

The Hon. C.M. SCRIVEN: Labor's Medicare Cancer Plan is the most important reform to Medicare since it was introduced by Bob Hawke. It is a sad fact that one in two Australians will be diagnosed with cancer, which means that 150,000 Australians every year will be given the confronting news that they will have to fight cancer. I would be surprised if anyone listening to this does not know someone who has faced that harsh fact, and for many people huge costs are also part of that devastating news.

Slashing out-of-pocket costs for cancer patients is part of Labor's commitment, which also includes $63.4 million for several initiatives to support patients with lung cancer, reduce the number of new diagnoses, and reduce healthcare costs. That includes funding for the Lung Foundation Australia, for metastatic cancer nurses located across Australia, and for an additional 42 prostate cancer specialist nurses to boost care and support for men and their families, including in my home area of Mount Gambier.

With this suite of improvements on the table to assist nurses and midwives to deliver excellent health care, I hope we can see a great future in our hospitals and healthcare system. I sincerely thank all the nurses, midwives and care assistants for the important work they do in our communities, hospitals and homes. I commend the motion to the council.

The Hon. S.G. WADE (Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (16:22): I am pleased to rise today to support the motion moved by the Hon. Clare Scriven, recognising both International Nurses Day and the International Day of the Midwife. Having said that, I am disappointed that in joining what I thought was a bipartisan recognition of the contribution of nurses and midwives which included no political content, she chose to take the opportunity for a political speech.

For my part, I thank all our nurses, midwives and care assistants for the increasingly complex health services they deliver with compassion and skill in our hospitals, our homes and a multitude of other settings. Each year, International Nurses Day and the International Day of the Midwife provide us with the opportunity to stop and recognise the contribution nurses and midwives make in healthcare settings right across South Australia, and indeed across the world.

As Minister for Health and Wellbeing I frequently receive letters from South Australians who were admitted to one of our hospitals or who needed access to government-operated health services and who were overwhelmed by the care, compassion and understanding of members of the nursing and midwifery professions. In expressing, on their behalf, my thanks to both professions today I know that I echo the thanks of even more, tens of thousands of South Australians, who, each year, benefit from the care and comfort that nurses and midwives provide.

Yesterday, a question from the Hon. John Dawkins afforded me an opportunity to update the council on the contribution of midwives in South Australian hospitals and speak about some of the activities that have taken place this month in connection with International Day of the Midwife. Accordingly, I will focus my comments this afternoon on the nursing profession.

Nurses are highly skilled and caring professionals who we depend upon at some of the toughest times in our lives. When our future looks bleak, when we have more questions than answers, when we are in pain and cannot get comfortable, when we are frightened or confused about the treatment we are receiving and whether it is having the desired effect—in all of these circumstances and in a legion of others nurses are there to comfort us, to help manage our pain, to calm our confusion and to speed our recovery.

International Nurses Day is celebrated each year on 12 May, the anniversary of the birth of Florence Nightingale, the trailblazing matriarch of the modern nursing profession. Each year, celebrations have a theme, and this year's theme is Nurses: A Voice to Lead—Health for All. As I see it, though, there are two elements to the theme: firstly, the leadership that the nursing profession can and does offer and, secondly, the universality of nursing care and the right of every person on the planet to be able to access the care that they need.

In terms of nursing leadership, South Australia is well placed and well served by SA Health's Nursing and Midwifery Office and the strategic leadership it provides both in supporting the profession as it operates today and in planning to meet South Australia's future nursing needs. A common difficulty across Australia is a shortage of mental health nurses. This shortage is likely to become more acute as thousands of mental health nurses retire in the near future. In South Australia, the average age of a mental health nurse is 58, 14 years older than the general nursing workforce.

To address this, the Nursing and Midwifery Office has worked with education providers in the South Australian local health networks to develop the South Australia mental health nursing workforce strategy. It will provide a framework to address current issues within mental health, identifying barriers within the system and giving recognition for a sustainable mental health nursing workforce model.

I am delighted to be able to inform the council that, following this collaboration with education providers and LHNs, the University of South Australia has advised that there has been a doubling of applications for its Graduate Diploma of Mental Health Nursing. The Nursing and Midwifery Office is providing study assistance support for nurses who are eligible to undertake this program of study, while the LHNs have provided additional places for clinical placements. This is tangible evidence of what nursing leadership is doing to ensure we are ready to face tomorrow's challenges.

The delivery of health services is going through dramatic change in terms of not only clinical tools but also technology, health informatics and digital health. These are areas of growing importance for the health sector and nurses and midwives, as the largest workforce in SA Health, need to be equipped to respond to these challenges. The Nursing and Midwifery Office has worked with Health Informatics Society of Australia, the peak professional body for digital health, to develop a targeted education program for nurses and midwives. This is a national first.

I am delighted to say that 20 of our nurses and midwives have been nominated to form the inaugural group in this program. These are just two of the ways that the leadership of the Nursing and Midwifery Office, under the guidance of our Chief Nurse, Jenny Hurley, supports the delivery and ongoing development of the high-quality patient care that South Australian nurses and midwives provide every day.

The second part of the theme of this year's International Nurses Day is 'Health for All', that is, the universal right of every person to be able to access nursing care when they need it. Last Friday, it was my honour to attend the 2019 Nursing and Midwifery Excellence Awards and to present awards to some outstanding South Australian women and men whose work and professionalism embodies the theme of 'Health for All'.

This year's event included the presentation of humanitarian awards. There were four winners in this category. One award went to Alice Every, the nursing director of aged care, rehabilitation and palliative care in the Northern Adelaide Local Health Network. In 2016, Alice took a year off and offered her skills as a volunteer with Australian Volunteers for International Development. Another award went to Margaret Maloney, a founder of the Overseas Specialist Surgical Association of Australia. This is an association that provides surgery for poor people in Timor-Leste and eastern Indonesia who suffer from burns, cleft palates, congenital defects, leprosy disease, cysts, tumours and trauma.

The third of the awards went to Mr David West, a manager and mental health nurse based in Victor Harbor who provides specialist mental health care for the surrounding rural communities. David has had significant involvement in humanitarian aid, both internationally and locally, providing psychological support to serving defence personnel, veterans and those affected by disaster. The fourth and final humanitarian award went to Joy Booth, who works as a nurse education facilitator at the Royal Adelaide Hospital. Joy has been a key member of the volunteer plastic and reconstructive surgical team to Timor-Leste, delivered by the Overseas Specialist Surgical Association of Australia and the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons.

The commitment of these and other nurses to provide universal health care is not only evidenced in the developing world, it can come to the fore at any time in any place, and the cost to the nurse and their loved ones can be extraordinarily high. In this context, I again honour the memory of the South Australian nurse Kirsty Bowden, who in 2017 gave her life when, in the midst of the London Bridge terrorist attack, without hesitation she stepped forward and ran towards danger. Kirsty's reflex was a nurse's reflex; it was nursing leadership at its best and an embodiment of a commitment to health for all. Kirsty's values were the values that South Australian nurses and midwives provide in their service every day. I commend the motion to the council.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. T.J. Stephens.

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