Nurses Boss Sorry Over Letter Scrapping of nurse-patient ratios sparks concern Australian Nursing Federation says assigning one nurse to care for 12 seated patients can compromise safety, especially given the rapid turnaround. The head of nursing at five southeast Queensland hospitals has apologised for a badly worded letter that says 145 nurses will lose their jobs. Nurses at two Brisbane hospitals staged walk-outs and threatened legal action on Thursday after this week receiving the letter which was supposed to announce a new plan to employ young nurses. Associate Professor Lesley Flemming runs the 3500-strong midwifery and nursing services at the Royal Brisbane and Women's, Prince Charles, Caboolture, Redcliffe and Kilcoy hospitals. This week she signed a cover letter to a complete restructure of nursing services which talks of "staff dismissals" to the more senior Grade 5 and Grade 6 nurses. This is the level of nurses who work in or manage hospital wards, the bulk of Queensland's 46,000 nurses. Queensland Health is trying to employ 140 younger nurses and has admitted it employed only 15 graduate nurses in the Metro North region since the start of 2012. The letter does not make clear that Queensland Health is calling for expressions of interest for around 145 voluntary redundancies. "I am absolutely, very, very sorry," Professor Flemming said. I truly am. This is my team and I am sorry that they have been affected. Professor Flemming said the wording in the first letter received by nurses was needed to meet the industrial relations legislation to be able to offer voluntary redundancies. A new letter written on Thursday night explains the voluntary redundancies and the efforts to set up a new Graduate Nurse Supported Practice Unit. "I am hoping that the new letter will clarify things," Professor Flemming said. No-one is going to be sacked. Professor Flemming said Queensland Health must address a looming problem as its nurses reach the end of their careers. The average age of Australian nurse is around 45 and 47. "However between 20 and 30 per cent of (Metro North) nursing staff are over 50," Professor Flemming said. So within the coming decade we are going to see the baby-boomers begin to leave. Professor Flemming said the global financial crisis persuaded lots of nurses to stay in their jobs, rather than retiring and opening the door to younger graduate nurses. "We have a usual turnover rate of five to six per cent of nurses who leave the workforce," she said. However with the global financial crisis worldwide, reduced that to two per cent. So we have had - quite understandably - large number of nurses staying in the workforce. Almost 50 per cent of Metro North nurses - 47 to 48 per cent - are classed as Grade 5, which is the level of an experienced nurse working or managing a hospital ward. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare 2011 statistics show 25.5 per cent of Queensland nurses are aged 55 and over; 38.62 per cent of nurses are aged between 45 and 54 and 19.72 per cent aged between 35 and 44. Metro North normally tries to employ 100 nurse graduates each year.