WA hospital crisis: Brave nurse shares story of ‘anxiety, fatigue and stress’

While WA’s frontline health workers continue to save lives, Australian Nursing Federation state secretary Mark Olson said they are too afraid of Health Department punishment to look out for themselves.

As the staffing crisis continues in hospitals across the State, Mr Olson said staff are too scared to speak out about the debilitating conditions, out of fear of reprisal from the Health Department.

The claim follows an anonymous letter to the editor in The West Australian newspaper yesterday, written by a veteran nurse who revealed the harsh reality for our hospital staff.

• WA hospital crisis: 20-year nurse shines light on shocking health crisis
• Perth hospital crisis: Muyo Murphy describes ‘week of hell’ at Royal Perth Hospital with delayed surgeries
• Paul Murray: The one thing the McGowan Government needs to do to fix WA’s alarming health crisis

“Anxiety, fatigue and stress are already part of the uniform,” the nurse wrote.

“How many times I tell myself the next shift will be better. It would be funny, but it’s not.”

Mr Olson said he is in no way surprised by the letter.

“I get stories and emails all the time of nurses crying in the toilets, crying before they go to their shift, having anxiety attacks and being burnt out,” Mr Olson said.

“The only surprising thing to me is that we don’t see it more often…they’re scared to speak out more often for fear of some kind of disciplinary reaction.”

He believes the straight truth is the only way to get their message across.

They don’t see any real end in sight.

“They’re real, they’re raw and it’s what’s happening right across the State,” he said.

As the battle for more staff continues, Mr Olson said more and more workers were looking to resign.

“They don’t see any real end in sight, they don’t see the Government taking the steps,” he said.

“I get a lot of older nurses saying I was going to retire at 65 but I think I’m going to retired at 60 instead.”

He hopes the bravery of this worker’s actions will inspire others to come forward and “open the floodgates” to the issue.

“I hope we start hearing more and more stories from the frontline because I think the media would much prefer to hear from the nurses and midwives themselves rather than from me,” he said.