Anger over naked pictures of elderly patients

Senior nurses have denounced a photo essay showing naked and near-naked elderly people in their union's monthly magazine.

"I think it's disgusting and unethical," said nurse Jan Featherston, manager of Waimarie Hospital in Remuera.

The five-page essay is published in the current Kai Tiaki Nursing, the NZ Nurses Organisation magazine, which is now being distributed to the union's more than 30,000 members.

Caregivers appear with the elderly residents in the photo essay. It shows caregivers' work to support the joint Nurses Organisation-Service and Food Workers Union "fair share" campaign to boost their rates above the $11 an hour they are paid on average.

The unions want $14 to $16.

One of the photos is of a woman in her 90s - she has died since it was taken - naked in a shower with her breasts visible.

Another shows a man sitting on a commode with a towel across his lap.

A third depicts a woman having her incontinence pants pulled up.

Others include residents being fed or shaved.

Ms Featherston said it was wrong to use frail, elderly people in an industrial dispute. A former member of the Nurses Organisation's national gerontology group, she said she would send a written complaint to the union.

"I think elderly patients are vulnerable enough without these types of photographs being published in what's supposed to be a professional nursing journal.

"A lot of members are very distressed by this," Ms Featherston said.

It undid their hard work for professional standards.

The gerontology group's chairwoman, Beth Kelly, said the photos were an abuse of elderly people's right to dignity and respect.

But the photographer, Alan Knowles, said the elderly people in his pictures had all given written consent, except for one, who had dementia and whose family gave written permission.

"The people being cared for know how little the carers are paid and they were more than pleased to do their little bit ... in having their photographs taken."

A co-editor, Anne Manchester, acknowledged the photos would be controversial but said she did not regret publishing them.

She defended the depiction of nakedness, saying: "That's what caregivers are sometimes dealing with: naked people and sometimes dressed people. That's the nature of the work."

Grey Power spokesman Don Chapman said photos of people in such personal situations were unnecessary because people knew that that was what caregivers did.

He took "a dim view" of the magazine's relying on a family's consent for a man with dementia.