Orange nurses and midwives join statewide strike, with pay and ratio conditions 'out of hand'

In yet another fighting attempt for better working conditions, Orange nurses and midwives again joined their union peers on Thursday, protesting for change in a sea of scrubs along Forest Road.

Statewide, the 24-hour strike on September 1 was the most recent demonstration, marking the city's second health worker strike action this year - after an estimated 50 per cent of the workforce walked off the job earlier in February.

"We absolutely felt like it fell on deaf ears," Orange EN and secretary of the Mid-Western health care branch, Mathew Grant said of the government's response to the first strike.

"We made our point, we walked out in numbers - and not just based on receiving better pay, but on ratio claims for the sake of our patients' safety - and to date, there's been nil improvement; zero."

Signs, verbal and literal, communicated widespread disappointment, with health workers saying they continue to be at breaking point with an "unfair system".

Union members of the NSW Nurses and Midwives Association, say they're juggling unmanageable workloads, intense fatigue and poor wages.

"At any given day, the decisions we make are going to affect somebody's life," Mr Grant said.

"We would like our pay rise to be in line with inflation and we've earned the right to have an affordable wage."

Low wages continues to be an issue that piggybacks off of being well-outnumbered during their shiftwork, nurses are saying.

This is, where the figure of people in their care, is far outweighing the realistic capacity of each individual.

"Nurses and midwives are in a constant state of worry about their patients and about what they can't do for their patients, because they can't be everywhere at once," NSWNMA general secretary, Shaye Candish said.

"Clinical health professionals should not be in a situation which means that every shift they go to work, they have to decide which patient gets care, which patient waits, and which patient misses out.

"This is not sustainable."

With the patient-to-staff ratio "supposed to" sit at one nurse per four people, several health workers describe that figure as essentially, non-existent.

Orange RN at Bloomfield and vice-president of the NSWNMA mid-western mental health branch, Wayne Ozols said the current ratios are easily, more than double that.

He said it's to a point where these "dangerously high" ratios, have now gotten "out of hand".

"On some wards, we're left to look after anywhere from 10 to 12 patients," Mr Ozols said, "and if something goes wrong, it'll be the nurses who'll be held responsible - not the higher up's.

"We haven't been listened to by the government; good nurse-to-patient ratios ensures safety and it gives staff the opportunity not to be worn out.

"But people are calling for [nurses] to do overtime and it's every day - it's not just the occasional day, it's every day - and it's getting out of hand."

Mr Ozols said that this strain is leading to intense physical and emotional burnout across the health sector.

It's "heartbreaking", he said, where nurses - people who entered the industry for their love of helping others - sadly, no longer want to be stuck in the current conditions.

"When you know you're going to be understaffed and overloaded, you don't want to work and you don't put in as much effort as you would normally, because you can't," he said.

"You're just so tired and you're frustrated - that things that are happening, just shouldn't be happening.

"I think that one of the 'problems' with nurses, is that we care too much - and when the government won't negotiate fairly with our union, then we do feel like we're being taken advantage of.

"And it is heartbreaking."

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