The way nurses and midwives work in relation to the current rostering practices has been raised as a concern. Rostering practices impacts the ability to maintain safe patient care ratios, staff wellbeing, and retention of the current nursing and midwifery workforces.
Rostering is one of the most complex and important professional and organisation functions undertaken by those who manage nurses and midwives. Rostering practices and principles may not be meeting the needs of the current nursing and midwifery workforce leading to the decreased availability, increased absenteeism, and a shift towards casualisation of the professions.
Western Health partnered with Safer Care Victoria, the Victorian Department of Health, the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation Victorian Branch, and two other health services (The Royal Melbourne Hospital and Echuca Regional Health) to lead Victoria in a better understanding of the way nurses and midwives are rostered and provide solutions for future rostering practices across the state.
The findings of “developing employee-centred rostering principles” project indicate that many nurses and midwives are satisfied with their roster however they experience frustrations and challenges with current roster practices and principles, and these have adverse impacts on their health, work, and personal lives. These impacts include roster-related fatigue; difficulties providing high quality and continuity of patient care and managing other commitments; and the need to take personal leave due to fatigue, unmet roster requests, or other commitments.
The Victorian employee-centred rostering principles have been underpinned by the priorities identified in the project. When it comes to rostering, nurses, midwives and managers, acknowledge that the Four Fs should be at the front of everyone’s minds: Foundations, Flexibility, Fairness, and Fatigue Management. The principles provide rostering considerations for nurses, midwives, and their managers to incorporate the Four Fs into their rostering processes and systems.
Western Health joined with the other project participants to develop a set of state-wide nursing and midwifery roster guidelines using a co-design approach. The Victorian Rostering Toolkit was published by Safer Care Victoria in December 2023. This project has been supported by the Western Health-Deakin University Nursing Research team who have provided statistical analysis of the results of each phase of the co-design project.
The Nursing & Midwifery Directorate have developed the Western Health guidelines using both the internal co-design process and the Safer Care Victoria guidelines to ensure that they meet our local requirements.
The new guidelines are planned to be launched soon and will be implemented across Western Health in 2024.