MACH Health

13/10/2025

When insurers enter the mental health fight, watch the system lean.
Allianz Australia’s new Structural Change Program is an interesting market response. But the reason they’re moving is simple: soaring costs, especially in health & social care, are now unsustainable.

Here’s what the data shows, especially for healthcare:
The Health care & social assistance industry has the highest number of serious workers’ compensation claims for mental health conditions in Australia.

In 2020-21, the median compensation paid for serious mental health claims was $58,615, compared to $15,743 for all injury claims.
Mental health claims also come with much longer downtime: the median time lost for psychological injury was 34.2 weeks, vs 8.0 weeks for physical claims.

Across all industries, average mental-health-related claims run about
$45,900, roughly 5× the average cost for physical injuries. Foremind
In dollar terms, $543 million was paid in workers’ compensation benefits for psychological injuries in Australia (across industries). Allianz Australia
When we layer on the emotional and operational toll in hospitals, clinics, aged care, where staff face trauma, burnout, violence, emotional load daily, these figures are more than statistics. They’re real-life losses of skilled people, escalating premiums, and system pressure.

At MACH Health, we believe healthcare deserves better than reactive patches. You need structural change: risk-measuring systems, predictive early support, embedded resilience.

Allianz’s move challenges us all:

Will your organisation wait for insurers to force change… or begin building a safer, sustainable system today?

New research from Allianz Australia reveals that supporting mental health in the workplace continues to be a challenge, as managers and employees alike are feeling mental distress as a result of workload.

07/10/2025

“Strike action is now imminent” — nurses in Northern Ireland are being forced into a ballot over unresolved pay disputes.

This isn’t just a political standoff — it’s a breaking point driven by years of broken promises, under-resourcing, and inequity. The RCN is clear: paying lip service won’t keep staff.

As a nurse-led organisation, we stand with every clinician who has asked: How can we champion patient care when we are undervalued?
When those on the front line — day after day — feel ignored, burnout becomes inevitable, quality suffers, and trust erodes.

Northern Ireland’s nurses are not just fighting for a 3.6 % uplift. They’re fighting to be seen. To be heard. To be respected. To have parity.

To our network across Australasia and beyond: let this moment ignite deeper reflection in our systems. Let it remind us that health systems are nothing without healthy, supported healers at their core.

How are we actively investing in nurse welfare in our workplaces — not just in words, but in structures, pay, esteem?

Nurses working in Northern Ireland’s NHS are to be formally balloted on strike action over an ongoing row on pay.

28/09/2025

We’re told the UK has a “nursing shortage.”
Yet newly qualified nurses—trained, skilled, and ready—are pulling pints in pubs instead of caring for patients.

Why?
Because many feel undervalued, underpaid, and overwhelmed before their careers even begin. When the cost of living collides with stagnant wages and unsafe workloads, the NHS loses talent straight out of the gate.

This isn’t just about numbers on a workforce plan. It’s about the real lives of nurses who dreamed of the profession, only to find the system doesn’t dream with them.

If we can’t even retain the newest members of our profession, what hope do we have of fixing the wider crisis? It’s not about resilience posters. It’s about pay, respect, safety, and a workplace that doesn’t burn nurses out before they’ve begun.

The choice shouldn’t be between a career in nursing or a shift behind the bar.

What will it take for the UK to finally treat nursing as the profession it is—not as an afterthought?

EXCLUSIVE: Despite understaffing, many freshly qualified nurses are struggling to find jobs, with some turning to pub or bar jobs. Here, they tell the Daily Mail why.

15/09/2025

348,675 understaffed NHS shifts in Scotland last year.
That’s not just a number — it’s a warning.

FOI data shows 333,296 unfilled nurse and midwife shifts in 2024. That’s 900 shifts every single day where frontline staff had to do more with less.

This isn’t sustainable. It’s not “resilience” or “dedication” — it’s exploitation disguised as normality. Every unfilled shift pushes nurses closer to burnout and patients closer to harm.

💰 And the financial cost? Enormous.

Covering 900 shifts a day with bank staff = ~£82 million a year.

Covering them with agency staff = ~£164 million a year.

Add in sickness absence, burnout-related turnover, and patient safety incidents — and the true cost spirals even higher.

Unsafe staffing isn’t saving money. It’s the most expensive way to run a health system. We’re spending millions on patchwork fixes instead of investing in permanent recruitment, retention, and wellbeing.

My opinion? We’ve normalised the most costly option: underinvesting in our own workforce. We expect nurses to absorb the gaps, stretch themselves thinner, and then applaud them for holding the system together. But what we’re really applauding is survival — not care.

If this continues, the NHS doesn’t just face a workforce crisis. It faces a collapse of trust — nurses cannot keep saving a system that refuses to save them.

So how long will we keep paying more for less?

Figures released due to Scottish Labour suggest key workers were on understaffed shifts on 348,675 occasions last year.

14/09/2025

Day 1 – The Imposter Syndrome Trap

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard a nurse start with:
“Sorry, can I just say something…?”

That single word — sorry — is the quiet sound of a profession that has been conditioned to shrink before it speaks.

Research shows 6 out of 10 nurses live with impostor syndrome. That’s not a minority. That’s most of us — doubting our knowledge, our skill, and our value every single day.

And here’s the part we don’t like to admit: we keep this cycle alive.

We apologise before sharing an opinion.
We downplay our achievements so we don’t look “full of ourselves.”
We gossip about the colleague who dares to show confidence.
We cut down the junior nurse who speaks up too soon.
We laugh off our own expertise as if it’s not worth claiming.

This is not humility.
This is sabotage.
And the worst part is, we aim it at ourselves and at each other.

Generations of nurses have been taught to stay small — to support, not to lead.
And instead of breaking that conditioning, we pass it on.
Every time we roll our eyes at a confident colleague, every time we tell a student nurse to “wait their turn,” we reinforce the very culture that devalues us.

The cost is brutal:

Our voices vanish from leadership tables.

Our expertise is ignored until it’s too late.

Our wellbeing collapses under the weight of self-doubt we feed each other.

This is why we are devalued. Not only because of the system — but because we’ve learned to silence ourselves.

The only way out is confrontation.
To stop hiding behind “I’m just a nurse.”
To stop cutting down colleagues who dare to step up.
To demand more of ourselves — because until we value our own voices, nobody else will.

👉 My question: How much longer are we willing to keep ourselves small?

13/09/2025

From Lip Service to Devaluation: The Hardest Conversation Yet

The last series — Lip Service — was about what’s done to us.
The empty words, the hollow campaigns, the gap between promises and reality.
That was hard enough to write.
But this next one? This will be harder.

Because this time, it’s not about them.
It’s about us.

👉 How Did Nurses Become So Devalued in Healthcare?

Not because we lack skill, or heart, or grit.
But because over time, we’ve been shaped by patterns that hold us back:

Imposter syndrome

The cult of self-sacrifice

Emotional sabotage

Conditioned silence

Tall poppy syndrome

These aren’t easy truths. They cut close to the bone.
But here’s the thing: by shining a light on them, we create the chance to change.
In naming them, we can begin to heal.
And in life, by highlighting them, we can start to improve our health and wellbeing — as nurses, and as people.

Lip service showed us the betrayal from the outside.
This series is about the wounds from within.

Day 1 starts with the one so many of us know too well:
The Imposter Syndrome Trap.

Stay with me. This is the hardest conversation yet — but maybe the one that frees us most.

12/09/2025

Saturday read: Hard Yakka, Hard Truths
By Ashley Scott, LPN Scott — nurse, colleague, and accomplished poet from the US

I had the pleasure of meeting Ashley and I explained how being an Australian nurse is so unique. How I wouldn't trade it for the world, but we have some real problems.

It’s not written by me, but it could have been written about every Aussie nurse I know.

The long nights. The gallows humour in the tearoom. The knock-off stumble when your scrubs are crusted in grime. The unspoken bond of standing shoulder to shoulder when no one else steps in.

For nurses in Australia — Saturday often looks like this

Hard Yakka, Hard Truths

We rock up half stuffed , Macca’s coffee in tow,
Already cactus but still we bloody go.
ED’s jam-packed, alarms flat-out scream,
It’s carnage on loop, no nurse gets to dream.

Kev’s mouthing off, wants his meds on the fly,
Shazza’s circling the drain, Corey barely gets by.
Docs vanish quicker than a schooner at last shout,
So it’s us on the front line, bleeding it out.

Night duty wrecks ya, no cruisy shift here,
Servo pies, Red Bulls, guts twisted in fear.
Four a.m. hits — you’re flat-out, half dead,
Even the vending machine knows you by tread.

Out bush it’s lonelier, just dust, flies, and you,
No doc, no backup, no cavalry crew.
One kit, one nurse, under blistering skies,
Holding the fort till the Flying Doc flies.

The tearoom’s our temple, the banter pitch black,
Mick stirs the pot, Tash fires jokes back.
Sophie rips on the bosses, we cackle through pain,
Dark humour’s the drip in our overworked vein.

Knock-off’s a stumble, scrubs crusted in grime,
Your body’s buggered, your soul out of time.
But shoulder to shoulder we laugh through the din,
’Cause the bastards out there will never step in.

This gig will gut ya, split marrow from bone,
Still we clock on, though we’re breaking alone.
So tell me, Australia, how much can we give,
Before you decide if we’re worth letting live?

🙏 Thank you Ashley Scott, LPN, for giving Aussie nurses a voice through your words.

11/09/2025

Day 5: Lip Service – The Final Word

I wish I didn’t make people uncomfortable.
But that’s life.
And if I’m honest, the number of nurses who’ve quietly said, “I’m so glad you spoke up,” tells me this needed to be said out loud.

Over the last five days we’ve peeled back the layers.

Day 1 showed the mask — “I’m fine” — the phrase nurses wear to survive.

Day 2 exposed how the system gaslights itself with internal lip service, talking about change but refusing to act.

Day 3 revealed how campaigns and wellbeing slogans are rolled out like band-aids, but never heal the wound.

Day 4 questioned why we even need things like R U OK Day in the first place — proof that the system failed so badly that we have to schedule a day to remember what should happen every shift.

Day 5 brings us here.

The truth: Lip service is the single greatest betrayal of nurses.

It’s not the kind words from leaders, the slogans, or the glossy reports.
It’s the emptiness of knowing the truth, naming the truth, and still doing nothing that actually changes the conditions we live in.

Nurses are not burning out because we lack resilience.
We are burning out because the system has normalised sacrifice — expecting us to give more, stay longer, carry heavier loads — and then pats itself on the back with posters about “wellbeing.”

That gap — between what is said and what is done — is where the moral injury festers.
That is the wound lip service leaves behind.

Lip service costs more than morale.
It costs lives.
It drives nurses out of the profession.
It fractures trust between teams and leaders.
And it erodes the very foundation of patient safety.

If you’re in leadership, you cannot ignore this:
👉 Words are not care.
👉 Strategies without action are not solutions.
👉 Lip service is not leadership.

So the final question in this series is simple:
When will your actions finally match your words?

Until that day, every “wellbeing initiative” is nothing more than decoration on a crumbling wall.

10/09/2025

The Lip Service Series – Day 4: Shiny Reports, Empty Wards

Every year, the reports roll out.
Polished documents.
Shiny graphics.
Pages filled with words like “engagement,” “culture,” “support,” and “innovation.”

They tell the story of an organisation that values its staff.
They promise a future of wellbeing, safety, and care.

But walk onto the ward and the truth hits hard.

Shifts are still understaffed.

Nurses are still skipping breaks.

Patients are still waiting in corridors.

Staff are still leaving faster than they can be replaced.

That’s the gap — the shiny story on paper versus the daily reality on the floor.

And the same goes for the “awareness days.”
Take R U OK? Day.
This is not about criticising the campaign — it has saved lives.
But its very existence is proof of how far we’ve failed.
If care, connection, and humanity were built into the system every single day, there would be no need for a campaign to remind us.

Now there’s a day for everything.
A day for mental health.
A day for appreciation.
A day for resilience.
Because it’s easier to design a poster or run a hashtag than it is to change the reality on the floor.

The uncomfortable truth is this: these reports and campaigns aren’t written for nurses.
They’re written to protect the system, to impress regulators, to reassure the public.

But while the system tells a story of progress, nurses live the opposite.
The wards stay empty. The pressure keeps rising. The burnout keeps climbing.

👉 If the reality doesn’t match the report, it isn’t truth.
👉 If care only exists on a campaign day, it isn’t culture.
👉 It’s just more lip service.

So here’s the challenge:
Do we want to keep adding more “days,” or do we want to build a system where every day is safe and supported?

09/09/2025

The Lip Service Series – Day 3: Safety in Name Only

No word gets used more in healthcare than safety.

Every strategy document, every annual report, every policy framework is built on it:

“Patient safety first.”

“Commitment to safe staffing.”

“A culture of safety.”

But here’s the reality: safety has become lip service.

Because while the system talks about it, the system doesn’t deliver it.

Shifts still run chronically short.

Nurses still cover double the patients they should.

Breaks still disappear under impossible workloads.

Patients still wait in corridors because there’s nowhere else to go.

That isn’t safety. That’s survival.

And the evidence is clear:
📊 For every additional patient added to a nurse’s workload, mortality increases by 7%.
📊 Nurses working 12+ hour shifts are twice as likely to make an error compared to those on 8-hour shifts.

The system knows this. These studies aren’t new. Yet year after year, the same words get recycled while the same conditions remain.

That’s what makes it lip service.
It’s not about bad people — it’s about a system that protects itself with language, while failing to act on what it already knows.

Because if safety were truly more than a slogan, the numbers would be going down, not up.

👉 So here’s the question the system needs to answer:
If safety is really the foundation of care, why does the system still accept unsafe as normal?

06/09/2025

Happy Father’s Day to the Nurse Dads

To every dad who wears scrubs as well as the title of father—today is for you.

Fatherhood in nursing isn’t easy.
It means missed birthdays, late-night calls you can’t take, and showing up exhausted after a double shift but still finding energy for bedtime stories.

It means carrying the weight of a ward and then going home to carry the weight of your kids in your arms.

This week I’ve been writing about burnout, systems, and solutions.
But on Father’s Day, I’m reminded of why it matters so much—because behind every nurse is a person, a family, and moments that can’t be replaced.

So here’s to the nurse dads:

The ones working today while the rest of us celebrate.

The ones putting patients first, even when it means putting family second.

The ones proving strength isn’t about never getting tired, but about still showing up with love at the end of it all.

Happy Father’s Day.
You’re seen. You’re valued. And you’re making a difference at work and at home.

04/09/2025

Day 5- no more excuses

Day 5 – No More Excuses This week we’ve walked through what a nurse-first system looks like. Day 1: A profile that sees you before the roster. Day 2: Daily check-ins and nudges that protect you in real time. Day 3: A dashboard that shows burnout building before it breaks you. Day 4: A library of...