ANMF members Jamuna and Anne at IPC Health Altona Meadows.
With ANMF help, members at IPC Health – a community provider with several sites across Melbourne’s west – have achieved a big win regarding their classification.
Youth and women’s health nurses and diabetes educators contacted ANMF with concerns that their classifications didn’t adequately reflect their job requirements, skills and knowledge. Working together with the members, ANMF has successfully convinced IPC Health to reclassify these positions as follows:
- All youth and women’s health nurses will be reclassified from community health nurse (CN4) to clinical nurse consultant B (CAPR 3.2).
- All diabetes educators will be reclassified from CN6 to clinical nurse consultant B (CAPR 3.2).
Why this outcome matters
This outcome represents formal recognition of the advanced practice, autonomy and specialist clinical expertise required in these roles.
Throughout this process, ANMF strongly advocated that both roles were not appropriately captured within the community nurse stream alone. As outlined in the 2024-2028 public sector agreement, classifications must reflect actual work value, including:
- independent caseload management
- advanced clinical judgement and decision-making
- provision of specialist advice and consultancy
- involvement in education, quality improvement, research and service development.
These features align with the definition of a clinical nurse consultant under Clause 83.3, which describes roles providing clinical leadership, consultancy and advanced practice within a specialty discipline.
IPC Health has now acknowledged that:
- The youth and women’s health nurse roles sit above their previous classification and demonstrate consultant-level work value, including autonomy, specialist practice and contribution to system-level activities
- Diabetes educator roles similarly meet the clinical consultancy and advanced practice characteristics of the CAPR stream, and do not meet the definition of CN6 ‘in-charge’ roles under the agreement.
In addition to the value from work recognition, this reclassification has also resulted in a significant pay rise for youth and women’s health nurse members. ANMF congratulates members on this wonderful outcome.
