Register - WIN a $10,000 Safari | Login  'Run off their feet'
and no end in sight  By Paul Heinrichs May 9, 2004  "Run off
their feet," observed Iris Kerr, a patient in Maryborough
Hospital, as a nurse scurried in and out of her ward. "Off their
feet!" she adds for emphasis.  Ms Kerr is 10 days into this
stay, her third with a foot complaint, and she is satisfied with
care at the hospital, 200 kilometres north-west of Melbourne.
As for the nurses, who work mostly without complaint on a
morning ratio of one-to-six patients, as opposed to city nurses'
one-to-four, she's more than sympathetic. It ought to be evened
up, she thinks.  In the next bed, Valerie Pitt, recovering from
surgery, said: "Everything's explained - it's more personalised.
They popped in heaps of times last night."  The Maryborough
nurses received the pay rise negotiated by the ANF after
industrial action, but their ratios, set in the previous
enterprise agreement, did not change. The afternoon shift ratio
is one-to-seven, compared to the cit