Irony

I do love a bit of IRL irony.

I am a nurse, as most reading here will know. I work in the Private Sector here in Victoria. So once again I answered the question today, that no, I was not 'on strike' or whatever non health types think it was that the Public Sector nurses were doing during their industrial action. The Private Sector has it's own EBA's with each private association's management. That said, whatever the Public Sector get in terms of wages and conditions, for the most part the private follows suit. Because the Private Sector would collapse otherwise with the mass exodus of nurses leaving the private system due to unequal wage parity.

There are pros and cons in working in either sector, which I won't bore you with now. But one of the main sticking points that the Public Sector nurses were fighting to maintain were nurse-patient ratios. Which in basic generic terms means that nursing work loads are set and limited to one nurse to four patients in a ward situation. Nurse patient ratios are not relevant in the Private Sector as they were never part of an EBA for Private nurses. So in Private Hospitals many ward nurses still struggle under large workloads of often five to six or more patients; but that's another post for another day.

So I was sorting through my emails later today and reading up on some of the Nurse's Union (ANF) email updates sent to me. One addressed the topic of mass resignation that was floated to members a couple of weeks ago. Paraphrasing here, but basically the gist of the email was,

"if you want to be part of a mass resignation, blah blah do this and that details blah blah blah. Nurses considering resigning should look toward alternative employment with a Nursing Agency or in the Private System."

So. Resign as a show of strength that you won't accept the abolition of nurse patient ratios...

and either work for an agency that will most likely send you right back to the sector you just resigned from but with the added bonuses of more pay and less stable work

or

work in the Private system where your ratios don't even exist.

I told you: Ironic.