Rockhampton COVID-19 nurse says she’s been made a scapegoat

NPAQ's President, Phill Tsingos spoke to John Anderson from the Townsville Bulletin on the shortage of PPE being experienced by many of Queensland's Private Hospitals.

The article below was published Saturday 2 May 2020.

Today we wrote to the Minister for Health, The Hon. Greg Hunt seeking financial relief from AHPRA fees for Nurses out of work during the Covid-19 pandemic.

You may recall early anatomy classes and a discussion around the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. The sympathetic branch is activated when we face threat with resultant increases in heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, glucose metabolism along with hypervigilance and frequently aggression. This is the adrenaline rush that gets us ready to either fight (and hopefully defeat) the threat or to flee the source of danger to someplace safer. 

Steven Miller has commenced as a volunteer NPAQ Branch Secretary for Department of Education, SER. The State Schools Nursing Service aim is to ensure students with chronic health conditions have access to education along with their peers and ensure their condition is not a barrier to education.

The Health Workforce Scholarship Program (HWSP) provides scholarships and bursaries to help health professionals in remote and rural Australia retain and enhance their skills, capacity and scope of practice.

Today, NPAQ Secretary Cath Seaver wrote to the Minister for Health seeking free parking for QLD nurses and health professionals.  

Mater Health, which runs eight hospitals across Queensland, ordered frontline doctors and nurses to reuse disposable face masks. The controversial practice has now been ditched after it was questioned by The Courier-Mail.

Today NPAQ has written to the State Government and Federal Government Ministers for Health seeking assurance that Nurses will be provided with adequate PPE and kept informed of the preparation to protect our nurses at the frontline.