Nurse reveals the staggering wages Australian healthcare workers are making by treating Covid patients – here’s how she’s making such big bucks
- Casual registered nurse posts her huge fortnightly wages on TikTok
- A Filipino mum of two, she made $24,420 pre-tax, a fortune in her home country
- One 11.5 hour shift at a Catholic aged care home at double time earned her $978
A Filipino nurse has showed off her staggering fortnightly earnings for treating Covid patients in Australia amid a chronic shortage of healthcare stuff.
The migrant mum of two posted her payslip to TikTok, showing she made $24,420 gross because of overtime and pay loadings from just two weeks’ work as a casual registered nurse in Sydney,
In New South Wales hospitals, there is such a shortage of nurses that student dentists, podiatrists and speech pathologists have been recruited to help nurses cope with various Covid-related healthcare tasks.
Over just one 11.5 hour shift calculated at her double time rate of over $85 an hour the nurse earned a massive $978.
A Filipino nurse has showed off her staggering fortnightly earnings for treating Covid patients in Australia during a chronic shortage of nurses
A chronic shortage of nurses is leading to staff working long hours – and one payslip shared to TikTok showed the huge number of hours one registered nurse worked in one fortnight. She earned a huge $24,420 before tax for her hard work
After tax the nurse ended up with $12,582 having paid a whopping $8,600 in tax.
Despite the heavy hit she took from the tax man, in one two week period she earned what it would take the average annual Filippino nearly four years to earn, based on that country’s average wage of $3,218 a year.
She posted the clip with the title ‘My two weekly salary in Australia for looking after Covid patients’.
While it wasn’t exactly clear how many hours the woman had worked in total, it appeared to be close to 200 hours over the 14 days.
The woman shared her payslip on TikTok, which detailed a huge number of hours worked with extra loadings to compensate. She proudly displayed her payslip but it’s likely over the two weeks the mum of two didn’t see much of her family
The woman, who is living in Sydney with her husband and two young children, is a casual registered nurse at a Catholic aged care hospital.
She eventually removed the post from TikTok after it got a large amount of attention and Daily Mail Australia has chosen not to identify her.
With the huge mental and emotional toll on nurses currently working with Covid patients, and the physical demands of wearing full PPE, the wages seem a fair reward.
Recently an intensive care nurse working in one of Sydney’s worst hotspots says the virus is ‘ripping families apart’ and taking an enormous physical and emotional toll on healthcare workers.
The emotional toll is huge, but looking after COVID patients is physically very hard work too, Liverpool Hospital nurse manager Michelle Dowd said.
‘They require so much support and monitoring and physical care. We’re in layers of PPE, sometimes for hours at a time,’ she said.
A senior nurse manager said working with Covid patients takes a huge mental, physical and emotional toll on nurses
Healthcare workers are doing their best to help those who contract the virus, but the community must help them by getting vaccinated, Ms Dowd said.
‘Help us as your frontline healthcare workers to keep patients out of hospital,’ she pleaded.
‘By getting vaccinated you don’t just protect yourself, you protect your family, your friends, strangers … you will help us to save lives.’
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