A nurse from Middlemore Hospital's emergency department says the decision by nurses to refuse to work extra shifts has exposed the true scale of its chronic staffing shortages.
By Local Democracy Reporter Stephen Forbes
And the impact it has had on frontline services shows things need to change, she says.
Last month the New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO) called on its 35,000 members to refuse to work extra shifts in the country’s hospitals this week.
The pay dispute involves a special winter bonus of $100 a shift nurses have been paid for working additional hours, which started on July 1 and ended on September 30. The nurses' union wants to negotiate an ongoing payment system to reflect the added pressure its members are facing, but Te Whatu Ora has so far refused.
Te Whatu Ora denied there was any "discernible impact" from the action.
But according to the nurse, who was speaking on condition of anonymity, patients have been waiting up to seven hours to be seen by a doctor or nurse in the hospital’s emergency department this week. And some shifts in the ED had been operating with up to 20% fewer nurses, she said.
“In the emergency department there are longer wait times for people to see a nurse or a doctor and medications aren’t being delivered on time and people are waiting longer for x-rays,” she said. “It’s crazy.
“As nurses we have decided that enough is enough and we can’t just burn ourselves out by taking on all these extra shifts.”
The nurse said after a patient’s death in June she thought staffing levels would change.
“But nothing has happened - it’s just been business as usual.”
A patient died at the hospital in June after leaving the emergency department due to the long wait times. She returned to the hospital hours later and died of a brain haemorrhage the next day.
Association of Salaried Medical Specialists (ASMS) executive director Sarah Dalton said it backed the nurses' decision to refuse extra shifts without the bonus payments.
“They are putting stretched services under added pressure, but they are absolutely right in drawing attention to this situation,” Dalton said.
“People are really tired and they are really fed up and they want to see more leadership from Te Whatu Ora over this.”
New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO) president Anne Daniels said the Middlemore Hospital nurse’s experience was unfortunately the new normal for many of the country’s healthcare workers.
She said the union first predicted an extreme shortage of nurses in 2006, but successive governments had failed to heed the warnings.
“We’ve taken this stand because we haven’t been heard. It’s that simple,” she said. “We’ve been asking the Government and Te Whatu Ora to treat us with respect and acknowledge the work that we do.”
And Daniels said she wouldn’t rule out further action if nurses' concerns weren’t taken on board by Te Whatu Ora.
In a statement Te Whatu Ora (Counties Manukau) said deciding whether or not to work additional hours was an individual choice for the affected nurses.
“We are conscious there are some areas where demand is unusually high, but we are unaware of any widespread operational impacts on services at this stage. There is no discernible impact from the NZNO action and the availability of staffing is similar to previous weeks.”
Local Democracy Reporting is Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air.
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