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Lay Off Our Nurses Health Monster!

As someone who has a great deal of respect for our wonderful, caring and professional nurses, it seriously pisses me off when a politician - of all lifeforms - gets stuck into them.

Now down in Victoria the Health Monster is sticking his governmental boots into nurses who get work in public hospitals as agency nurses.

This means they get paid well over the measley award rates and can choose when and where they will work. As many nurses are part-timers so they can spend time with their children, why shouldn't they?

Due to the chronic shortage of nurses and the lack of resources in the public hospital system - brought about by abysmal wages, conditions and the stress of dealing with the ill and dying - bringing in agency staff is often the only way the hospitals can get enough nurses to make sure the sick get the care they deserve.

Why do our beloved nurses work agency shifts? Purely and simply it comes down to the fact they feel they have been taken advantage of since Florence Nightingale and they deserve good money for the important and underrated work they do.

An experienced staff nurse - you know the type you'd want by the side of your bed when you are at death's door - would get slightly over $25 an hour. To save lives. What do lawyers, parking inspectors or computer programmers get? One hell of a lot more, one would suggest, and for less important work.

And, Health Monster, what do you happen to get an hour? You bitch and moan about agency staff getting huge money for working Christmas Day (a very special public holiday that they have to drag themselves from their families to work), on your salary that would be a regular day's (and I am loath to use this word) work.

In his not-so-gentle attack on nurses, the Health Monster reckons staff nurses don't like and resent working with agency nurses. What utter bollocks! If he knew anything about his portfolio - other than how to try to screw the people who make sure hospitals work - he would know that most agency nurses in critical-care areas do shifts at their own hospitals.

As for this brilliant idea of creating a public hospital bank of nurses to work extra shifts - all the hospitals have one anyway! They can't get the staff to work bank because the rates are crap.

So, Health Monster, stop getting stuck into our nurses and find someone else to bully. How about launching a public inquiry into politicians' lurks, perks and rorts and save us a bit of money that way.

Leave the nurses alone. They have long memories and you just never know when you are going to get crook.

If there is something that has really got up your nose, let Grumpy Old Coot know at grumpy@webwombat.com