Nurses stress safer staffing needed

A Wednesday strike from nurses across the country out of staffing level concerns saw strikers, and supportive car horns, in central Blenheim.

Marlborough members of the New Zealand Nurses Organisation gathered in Blenheim’s Forum as part of the more than 36,000 New Zealand wide who walked off the job between 9am Wednesday and Thursday.

NZNO delegates say the levels of chronic public understaffing in the ranks of nursing is felt the whole way through the health sector.

“It’s especially felt in Marlborough and Nelson, as the population has higher ratios of elderly who have more complex health issues and therefore more acuity needed from staff”, says Mike

“These problems, which should be treated in Primary Care but for many reasons aren’t, instead take up beds in an already overstretched Emergency Department and Urgent Care – all of which have their own issues in staffing”

“Our models show we need 17 FTE staff while only having the resources for available for 10, and our contract negotiations have been stalled since September or October last year which is a very long time to go without a central contract”.

Wednesday’s strikes came as Health NZ announced that it has more than enough nurses available to work in the public hospital system but cannot afford to employ them.

A recent announcement championed by Health Minister Simeon Brown for a kidney dialysis unit at Wairau Hospital also comes with scepticism from striking nurses, who say they’ve heard nothing since the initial news and ask who will staff the additional specialist facility.

“Luxon stands in Parliament justifying 80 percent pay increases for Crown Board members arguing ‘good staff need to be properly numerated to keep them’ and yet Wairau Hospital can’t even reach minimal safe staffing levels now”, adds Mike.

“We’re the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff, and the ability of us to be that ambulance is getting increasingly eroded through being nursing staff overextended and overworked”, adds fellow NZNO delegate Andrew Ricketts.

“I got into nursing in 2016, and I love being able to head to work and help people every day, but the current situation really concerns me for when people may urgently need us”