General practice nurses are feeling frustrated and upset after recent pay boosts for their counterparts in hospitals and community settings.
“Nursing’s a great career, but what makes it really hard is that feeling of being undervalued in your work, especially when you have the comparison in Australia, or now we have the comparison with hospital staff, and I think that feeling of being undervalued is what makes nurses leave,” primary care GP nurse Zahn Koorts says.
“We all feel that we do just as much of a good job as the nurses in the hospital system, we work just as hard, we still have to use our critical skills, our critical thinking, we still work with complex patients in complex situations so yeah, frustrating that the funding is different for us.”
The General Practice Association of NZ (GenPro) claims there's now a pay discrepancy of up to 27% between hospital and community nurses and nurses in GP clinics, but the Government's yet to acknowledge that.
The Government significantly boosted the pay of hospital and community registered nurses employed by Te Whatu Ora as part of an interim equity settlement recognising the female-dominated profession has been historically underpaid because of gender.
This month nurses in aged care and other community organisations will get pay raises of up to 15%.
“It's a complete loss to me to understand why the Government wouldn't value the nurses that work in general practices around the country in the same way that they would nurses throughout the hospital and the community settings,” GenPro chair Dr Tim Malloy says.
He says it's not financially possible for private GP clinics to pay their nurses more without increases to the Government funding they receive.
Increasing patient fees is an option for clinics that aren’t part of the Very Low-Cost Access scheme, which receives more Government funding to keep patient fees low, but fee changes are subject to Te Whatu Ora’s approval.
GenPro has calculated comparisons between salaries for nurses employed by Te Whatu Ora, which start at $66,570, with nurses earning $54,528 a year at general practices.
Experienced nurses at the top of the pay scale take home $95,340 in hospitals, while in GP clinics, the top nurse's salary is $75,138.
Dr Malloy said the association has provided pages and pages of evidence to the Government of the pay discrepancy.
Last November, former Health Minister Andrew Little said there was no "real evidence.”
Now Health Minister Ayesha Verrall’s asked Te Whatu Ora to reinvestigate.
"If disparities are found, Te Whatu Ora will advise myself and the Minister of Finance, and we could make funding available from 1 July 2023 for primary care,” she said in a statement.
Dr Malloy said staff shortages mean some medical centres are cutting back on services.
He said strike action from nurses is 'a real possibility,’ in a press release.
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