NSW’s Already Underpaid Nurses Told to Stop Using OnlyFans

Nurses and midwives in New South Wales have been told to stop posting on OnlyFans, in an email sent out by the industry’s professional complaints body on Wednesday.

In the email, nurses are warned that “recent attention has been drawn to practitioners subscribing to the OnlyFans online service”, and that “if a practitioner is the content creator, then being recognised or publishing photographs in uniform, then they could be reported for their conduct”. 

The conduct in question – using OnlyFans to generate supplementary income to an abysmal wage – was deemed by a complainant “unprofessional” and “a distraction for patients”.

When news of the email first broke on Thursday, the Nursing and Midwifery Council of NSW told the Sydney Morning Herald that “attention has been drawn to the council of inappropriate use of online media content services such as OnlyFans.” 

“The role of the council is to protect public safety,” it said. “This involves the Council proactively informing practitioners of current trends and promoting compliance with professional standards, including how inappropriate conduct on social media can lead to complaints of unprofessional conduct or misconduct.”

The email, seen by VICE, also includes some scare scenarios for nurses and midwives to discuss with their colleagues, including one where a male senior manager recognises a junior employee from OnlyFans and blackmails her for “special treatment” on OnlyFans in exchange for “preferential rostering” at the hospital.

In another scenario, a nurse inexplicably starts promoting her OnlyFans to her colleagues, which “creates conflict in the workplace”. 

Finally, a worker is imagined to be recognised by a patient from their OnlyFans, apparently creating a “difficult situation” in the workplace, before another worker snitches on the OnlyFans nurse, believing her conduct [in her private life, may I add] to be “below the expected standards of a registered nurse and that her behaviour has brought her profession into disrepute”.

But these three scenarios assume a few things: a) that sexual harassment in the workplace is inevitable for people who do sex work; b) posting on OnlyFans brings the nursing and midwifery profession into disrepute; and c) being good at your job of providing life-saving medical care and doing sex work are mutually exclusive.

All of these are typical anti-sex work talking points, and, sent out by an advisory body, only further de-legitimise and stigmatise the profession.

The warnings are meagrely-veiled whorephobia, dressed up as disingenuous concern for patients, nurses, midwives and “online safety”, backed only by a series of manufactured scenarios.

What the scenarios fail to grasp is the likelihood of any of these contrived circumstances happening as a result of any other social media – which, given the user-base of TikTok or Instagram, is very high.

But as the council imagines it, sexual harassment in the workplace is not only possible when the nurse does sex work on the side, it is inevitable.

Michael Whaites, assistant general secretary of the NSW Nurses and Midwives’ Association (NSWNMA), the industry’s union, told VICE in a statement that “there is no excuse for sexual harassment, especially within a workplace”. 

“Because someone chooses to participate in online platforms like OnlyFans does not excuse this, not from managers or employers, or from customers or patients,” he said.

“Nurses or midwives shouldn’t automatically be prohibited from subscribing to, or lawfully participating in particular social media platforms.”

In November, 2022, thousands of nurses went on strike, for the fourth time in that year, calling for better patient-to-staff ratios amid a staffing crisis. Reports of PTSD, nurses being overworked and overstressed, and below-acceptable wages, have plagued the profession. 

As the average starting wage for a registered nurse or midwife in NSW is $67,000, it isn’t difficult to imagine the appeal of outside work like what is available on OnlyFans. The site, popularised by sex workers, has boomed since its meteoric rise during the pandemic. 

The appeal is clear – lucrative payouts, the ability to choose your own hours, and the relative safety and anonymity as desired of working in the online realm – perhaps the draw to “side hustles” would be less compelling if nurses were paid adequately for their crucial work.

In December, a Gosford nurse, Nelly Peach, was featured in a Daily Telegraph article, saying she makes eight times more money making TikToks than working as a level three senior nurse, working 38-hour weeks in emergency triage, a stressful and high-pressure position. 

Peach is “paid a minimum of $300 per hour producing three-minute long TikToks for brands such as HelloFresh, Go To Skin Care and Dr Woof, but is only paid $37 an hour attending to patients”, the Telegraph wrote. 

Whaites said the NSWNMA advised nurses and midwives to familiarise themselves with AHPRA’s Social Media Guidance and adhere to their professional obligations as set out in the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia’s Code of conduct for nurses, and the Code of conduct for midwives, but that the union had no objections to nurses supplementing their “continually suppressed wages” with secondary income.

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