Health—Nurse-to-patient ratio
364. Ms Ali Kent to the Minister for Health:
I refer to the Cook government's commitment to ensuring that Western Australians get the health care they need when they need it.
(1) Can the minister update the house on the implementation of the nurse-to-patient ratios across WA's health system?
(2) Can the minister advise how this provides Western Australian patients with greater access to care?
Ms Meredith Hammat replied:
(1)–(2) I thank the member for the question and for her excellent work in her community. We are very proud of the work we are doing to invest record amounts in our health system. Because of that, we have been able to deliver more than 900 new beds to the system and we have also increased our staff. The member will be happy to hear that as of July this year, we have now added over 5,000 extra nurses and 1,900 additional doctors to our health system since 2021. That is because we know how important staff—the people who work in it—are to our system. Again, I want to acknowledge the incredible work they do every year to deliver high-quality care for Western Australians.
It is because of our commitment to staff and the people who work in the health system that we have delivered on our commitment to roll out nurse-to-patient and midwife-to-patient ratios. This is something that the Australian Nursing Federation has been asking for for years, but it has taken a Labor government to deliver it. Ratios have already been successfully introduced at the Perth Children's Hospital emergency department and at wards in Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital and Osborne Park Hospital, with the initial evaluation showing encouraging outcomes for both patients and staff, as we would expect. To continue that rollout, in the last budget we invested over $20 million to support an additional 160 FTEs. This will support rolling out ratios to general medical and surgical wards right across the metropolitan area, with further rollouts beyond that to be taken in a staged way. Under these new ratios, there will be one nurse for every four patients during the day, and one nurse for every seven patients at night. This will ensure that we can manage safe and sustainable workloads for our staff, and it means we will deliver better patient outcomes for Western Australians as well. We are very proud of the work we are doing in relation to nurse-to-patient ratios. It is only ever Labor governments that invest in our workforce, because we understand how important that is. We know that staff are the most important part of our health system. We know that they are delivering high-quality care every day. We are here to support them to ensure that, together, we deliver improved patient outcomes, and that is what we are doing.
