RFDSWO rotary wing fleet should be unveiled soon.

You could train an orderly up in a few months and have them "helping out" around the place. But Doctors and Nurses are years of lead time training, and they are always in short supply. So even if they threw money at health care, which they haven't, all they can do is add extra wings and beds with no one to actually staff them. Paramedics and ambulance staff are they same, you can buy a fleet of ambulance and have no crew for them. Turnover rate is very high in both areas. And seriously, why in your right mind would you want to be a paramedic, half your calls are drunks and drug ODs on weekends most of which get angry and violent. And recently I've been told some of the Sydney covid calls to houses have been getting abused as well.

Shout out to all the ambulance staff out there, I know a few are ex aviators, Keep up the amazing work!

The WA health department has refused to offer permanent contracts to 1000’s of nursing graduates in the last 18months. If WACHS and WA health refuse to offer permanent contracts trained personnel will move interstate.

Not saying that the WA hospital situation is beyond criticism but in March the AMA was being headed up by Andrew Miller who seemed to have a very political drum to beat.
I'm pretty sure that the only thing stopping him from stepping up as the next rising WA Liberal star is the dilemma of a potential loss of revenue.

The comments from the AMA have been much less acerbic since Dr Omar Khorshid took the reins.

Indeed, which is why the system - and hospitals and aged care aren't the only examples - breaks down when the pipeline of cheap, menial labour is shut off.

Maybe - and I know I'm off with the fairies here - Australia should learn a lesson and focus on developing greater capacity to train doctors and health care staff locally, and pay them properly.

Pretty sure that Dr Andrew Miller was courted as a potential candidate by the Labor Party in WA.

Could not agree more, same as teachers etc, but health care and training are considered cost burdens to business and community. The casualised nature of the Aged care workforce was one area that should have been cleaned up as soon as covid hit. Most are working fulltime hours across several facilities, it would be easy to offer them full time work in single facilities and have the same workforce. But, like supermarkets and such, casual workforce are easier to manage and control. The government could easily fix this by mandating % of workforce be permanent to ensure casuals are only a small part, but they wont do this as it would piss off Coles and Woolies and many other government backers in big business.

They learnt it all from us in aviation.

What leads you to believe that the aged care workforce is 'casualised'? The data that I've seen shows the opposite, that the aged care workforce is largely made up of permanent full-time and part-time employees - around 75 percent - with the number of casual and contract arrangements shrinking over the past decade.

Might depend on your state, Victoria is still very casualised. The federal government has put in place some restrictions this year on it, so I am really referring to last years issues, but these are covid measures, so does it mean post covid will it return to the same with them dying from the flu for the same reason.

That doesn't work. Pre aviation I worked in a highly casualised industry and people were refusing to take full time or permanent part time because it was a pay-cut. Things became a bit nasty as the business expected people to migrate to full time arrangement but the workers refused which ended up increasing the labour cost.

Similar situation in hospitality. Alot of people don't want the full time work and be forced to work. Plenty of staff with side gigs or other responsibilities/interests.
I would be curious in health how many of the casuals would take the full time work with the associated lower pay rate. I'm guessing they can work across a few hospitals and get paid more.

Been there seen them, almost all then get to a point they want a loan for a house or car and then suddenly want full time employment and no-one offers it and they complain bitterly about how unfair it is. They are also very short sighted in that they don't realise for the 25% (much less if part time) extra pay they have opted out of super and holidays.

When Coles offered to take aviation employees on they also dropped the hours on many others working for the company significantly, which being a major casual employer they can do without reason.

Really? Do you have any data to support that contention?

You sure you're not confusing 'casual' with 'part-time' ? There's no dispute that the bulk of the aged care workforce is employed as permanent part-time.

Not sure what you are arguing here, of course they are, if you add in administration and those running the show. The main issue is the general staff, which of that possibly the figure is up to 40%. They are the ones changing the bedding and cleaning toilets, and if they get covid, they pass it on to the whole facility in quick time. The Karens that run the facilities and their buddies are all on good full time packages, as well as team leaders and medical staff etc.

You could say a Supermarket has 30% full time staff, but, everyone on the shop floor will be casual or limited part time.

You are right I probably am including part time in those figures, but they are the same issue, just less spread of workplaces.

Know some registered nurses all 3 have moved to australia because they are paid more here than for the NHS, aged care is totally different kettle of fish

Really? I would never, ever have picked or thought that. Though I did find this reference:

I suspect that any such rumour was tongue in cheek.

Your original contention was that the aged care workforce is "casualised". That term, casualised, has a specific meaning; the replacement of a permanently employed workforce by casual workers.

That is most assuredly not the case in the aged care workforce. The National Institute of Labour Studies at Flinders University conducts the National Aged Care Workforce Census every four years so there is an excellent dataset for that workforce. Due to collection issues with the 2020 census, the 2016 census provides the most recent data.

The data shows that the trend in the aged care workforce has been away from casual employment; between 2012 and 2016 permanent full-time employment in the sector increased, permanent part-time employment also increased and casual employment decreased by almost half. That is the opposite of a casualised workforce.

And do the data to which you referred distinguish between the workers who spend most of their time in contact with and moving among the aged in their care, on the one hand, and the 'administrators' - for want of a better term - on the other?

Again just an argument in semantics.

The problem with aged care is the casualised part of their workforce. The cleaners, cooks, casual carers, etc. These are the ones that travel between sites and move around the entire facility, and are most likely the lowest paid and lowest education level, coming from backgrounds with other casual working family members that congregate in numbers. The professional workforce, ie nurses, doctors, specialists, accountants, marketing, liaisons and management are most likely full or part time and are not the issue. Again even if its just 25% of your workforce is casual and travelling between multiple sites, that's still too much. The facility is only as secure as its weakest link.

I don't know why I needed 4 posts to explain that a Aged care facility is not just a bunch of nurses, I thought that would be obvious.

Possibly because you don't know the meaning of some of the words that you use. If only there was some sort of resource, like a list of words and their meanings, that people could refer to.