News Tonight

Flinders Medical Centre emergency department witnessed an industrial action at 7 am when nurses stopped working due to the issues with mental health staffing and services.

Around 7 am, nurses called for strike and refused to do some of the administrative work being given to them. But, it seems that South Australian Health is not in the state to afford the strike and have appealed in the Industrial Relations Court (IRC) to stop the strike.

Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation (SA) said though nurses concern is not wrong and the health department and the hospital did not give due consideration to the provision of mental health staffing, it would affect the administrative work.

Elizabeth Dabars, the spokesperson of the ANMA was of the view that mentally ill patient should be in a safer place and should be in a locked area like closed bed. Emergency ward is no solution to their problem and they could also acts as threat for staff working in the emergency ward.

Derek Wright, the spokesperson for the SA Health, affirmed that are also as concerned about patient and staff safety as others are and that could be seen by the fact that they have security guards as well in the emergency department.

Wright further asserted that recently two mentally ill patients were kept in separate ward than making them wait for closed beds in emergency ward. Decision is being awaited as they said patients care gets compromised due to such revolts.

Such is not the attitude of the nurses, who said they would like to solve the matter themselves and would not like to IRC. Wright on this said that they did not leave them with such option as their talks were failed with ANMA.

IRC could be of help for hospital authorities, said tensed Wright.