Arabic version: صحة الإقليم الشمالي تطلب 57 عاملاً إضافياً لمستشفيات توب إند
According to ABC News, NT Health has issued an urgent call for qualified workers to support Royal Darwin Hospital and Palmerston Regional Hospital, where staff are facing what acting chief executive Susan Bowden described as “immense pressure”.
In a sector-wide email sent on Tuesday, Bowden sought expressions of interest from nurses, midwives and pharmacists across the Northern Territory to take up to two weeks of duties at the hospitals. The department is seeking up to 57 qualified workers, including 20 emergency nurses, through redeployment from other areas of the health sector.
Royal Darwin Hospital and Palmerston Regional Hospital have been under a code yellow since July 31. The emergency status is called when extraordinary patient demand requires emergency procedures, and it is the sixth code yellow at the hospitals since January. Bowden said fatigue had set in among frontline staff and that reducing pressure and providing respite was her “number one priority”.
NT Health has also been examining measures to ease demand, including the potential early opening of Royal Darwin Hospital’s new 32-bed ward. Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation NT branch secretary Heidi Crisp said the union welcomed the surge-workforce call, but warned redeploying staff could create shortages in other departments. She said better pay and conditions were needed to improve hospital staffing levels in the long term.
