Dr Kerryn Phelps, AMA President and Jill Iliffe, ANF National Secretary

Australia's doctors and nurses stand united in calling for urgent addressing of the problems in our public hospitals and in aged care and in Australia's health workforce. We have serious concerns about underfunding in the public hospital system and in our aged care facilities. We have serious concerns about the numbers of nurses and doctors who are trying to do the work in our public facilities and are finding increasing pressure, increasing workloads, and difficulty with underfunding and lack of facilities.

We call today on the Government and the Opposition to come up with policies that will effectively address these major issues.

ILIFFE: Yes, thanks, Kerryn. As far as I'm aware this is the first time that the doctors and nurses have got together, and I think that's an indication of how serious we think the issues are. Workloads and staffing levels in our public hospitals, workloads and staffing levels in our aged care facilities, and workloads for both doctors and nurses right across the board. And the Federation has is really delighted to be here with the AMA to show that we are at one on the need for increased funding to our public hospitals and increased funding to our aged care sector.

PHELPS: Any questions?

QUESTION: Is it not about time doctors and nurses got together? It's been a while, hasn't it?

ILIFFE: Yes, it probably is, but I think this is going to be the first of many. We have a lot of things in common, and I think we haven't explored that territory before. And I think this demonstrates that we can be fairly united on the things that concern us, and find ways of working through the things where we have differences.

PHELPS: Interestingly, the things that affect patients are the same things that affect doctors and patients. And where we have a problem in the system that is making it difficult for doctors to provide health care services, and making it difficult to provide - nursing workforce shortages and so forth, we affect each other's issues all the time. And in fact, the nurses and the doctors have been working together behind the scenes on areas like aged care and the aged care alliance. And I think it's very important that we continue to work more in these areas because we have a great deal of common ground, and that common ground is patient welfare and the needs of the system. I think it's very important also that we are able to, together, bring these issues to the attention of the public.

QUESTION: So how does the shortage of nurses, which we know is very bad in nursing homes, how does that affect the work of doctors?

PHELPS: If you're a GP, trying to do your work in the middle of your busy surgery day, and you go along to an aged care facility to visit your aged patients, number one we have concerns at the level of qualified staff that are now working in aged care facilities since deregulation. So we have to, first of all, find somebody who's free who's able to tell us how our patients are going and to be able to meet with us to work out what is best for the patients and what their needs are, what prescriptions they need, how they've been going. So, first of all you have to track somebody down and they're usually running at a million miles an hour trying to get through their workload.

It's concerning for us that there are unqualified staff doing procedures and doing work in nursing homes who are not necessarily qualified to do that work. That, for us, affects the quality of our patient's care. So there are a lot of reasons why it is strongly affecting GPs, in aged care facilities, if the nursing care isn't available at the level that it needs to be.

QUESTION: What are you hoping to hear from Wooldridge today?

PHELPS: We're hoping to hear some solutions today. It's not enough just to talk about problems. But the sorts of things we want to hear about are plans for the Medicare Benefits Schedule. What we want to hear from Dr Wooldridge today are solutions to the aged care crisis. We want to hear solutions to public hospital underfunding and not just saying, 'it's all - the States have to just fix all the problems'. We want to know what they're going to do about the health workforce in medicine, in health and for doctors and for nurses. And we want to make sure that there are solutions for the problems that are besetting our public hospitals and aged care facilities.

ILIFFE: Certainly what we want to hear is that Wooldridge accepts that nursing is a national issue. Nurses are really tired of the Federal Government saying that nursing is not a national issue and fobbing nurses off to the States and Territories saying that it's their problem. The system can't function without nurses, and this government has got to realise that nursing is a national issue and they've got to do something about it.

QUESTION: But it doesn't look as though the Coalition is going to offer any more on public hospitals, nor for doctors medical benefits, where does that leave the nurses and doctors? Are you doing a joint campaign or setting it up in an election campaign?

ILIFFE: Well, we're certainly going to be - that's why we're here. We are campaigning, we are putting pressure on the major parties and the minor parties to come up with solutions for our public hospitals, for our aged care system, and for our workforce issues. And if they do not listen, then that will show up in the polling booths.

QUESTION: Is it realistic to expect any commitment from Dr Wooldridge, considering he won't be the Health Minister in the next cabinet?

PHELPS: Dr Wooldridge will be speaking on behalf of the Coalition and the Prime Minister, I believe, will today be releasing the health policy. So it will be the health policy of the Coalition that he'll be debating, today. What we expect to hear from both Dr Wooldridge and Jenny Macklin is a commitment to solutions for the problems in aged care, in public hospitals, and for the medical and nursing workforces.

QUESTION: When ……

ILIFFE: We certainly are doing that, the Federation. We are taking our message about public hospitals, aged care and the nursing workforce to the marginal electorates. I think you need to be very targeted with your resources, as far as the election is concerned.

PHELPS: The AMA has had a political network up and running with doctors at grassroots levels visiting their MPs over the last six months, and making sure that they are well aware, as will all the candidates in not just the marginal electorates, but certainly in every electorate in Australia. We have representatives who'll be visiting their candidates and making sure that they're aware of the health issues and bringing that to the attention of the public in their areas. I've also been visiting marginal electorates over the last couple of months.

Thank you all very much.

ILIFFE: Thank you.

Ends