Julie Governor of the NZNO at the Whangārei rally. An estimated 300 more nurses are needed in Northland. Photo / Michael Cunningham
Julie Governor of the NZNO at the Whangārei rally. An estimated 300 more nurses are needed in Northland. Photo / Michael Cunningham
Northland is short of an estimated 300 nurses and advocates fear the situation will get worse if issues around pay equity and adequate nursing numbers are not sorted.
Dozens of nurses who belong to the New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO) organised rallies throughout the country last weekend to call on political parties to have policies that address the nursing crisis as a matter of priority.
Nurses who work for Te Whatu Ora in Northland, aged care, GP practices, Māori and iwi, and Plunket rallied in Whangārei, Dargaville, Kerikeri, Kaitāia and Rāwene on Saturday to demand better pay and conditions.
New Zealand needs between 4000 and 5000 more nurses. NZNO Northland organiser Julie Governor said an estimated 300 more nurses were needed in Northland, especially in aged care residential facilities in the region where the number of full-time nurses has gone down from 12 to four.
Te Whatu Ora reached a pay equity agreement in principle with the NZNO in March 2022, worth $540 million, however, the agreement has now been challenged in the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) and the Employment Court.
When it became clear the court and authority action could take until 2024 to resolve, Te Whatu Ora applied to the ERA to fix interim rates, based on the 2021 agreement in principle. The ERA provided Te Whatu Ora with the order to pay the interim rates in December of 2022.
As a result, the interim pay rates were implemented for around 34,000 registered and enrolled nurses and health care assistants in New Zealand, effective March 7, 2022.
Te Whatu Ora said how much extra each nurse received in the payments depended on their current rates, but a large proportion of registered nurses were receiving an increase in base pay of about $12,000 annually.
But health advocates say more needed to be done to hire and retain nurses in Northland.
NZNO delegate Rachel Thorn said seven fulltime nurses were needed in Whangārei Hospital’s ED where she worked.
“It’s an endless battle to fill shifts every day. A lot of senior nurses have resigned to go to Australia which means new and junior nurses are thrown into the deep end quicker than in the past,” she said.
Eve de Goey, a diabetes nurse specialist at Whangārei Hospital, said the staffing shortage was having a massive impact in Northland that resulted in public healthcare having exhausted nurses.
She has spent 35 years as a nurse and will retire at the end of next month.
“Northland, like Tairāwhiti, is unique in terms of population demographics. We’ve got a lot of poverty and my view is the plight of nurses is a political issue that must be looked into,” she said.
Whangārei Hospital's ED needs seven fulltime nurses, partly due to a number of senior nurses leaving for Australia after the Covid lockdown. Photo / Tania Whyte
Margaret Hand works as a nurse for both the Te Hau Oranga in Dargaville and Te Hau Awhiowhio in Ōtangarei and says the pay difference between iwi and Māori providers and Te Whatu Ora is huge.
“Nurses at Te Whatu Ora may be getting $7 or more an hour than us. Historically, iwi providers have been paid peanuts for generations and that’s why nursing services in some areas across Northland are lacking or non-existent.”
She said it explained why the Māori mortality rate was up to three times higher than others in Northland.
New Zealand Aged Care Association chief executive Simon Wallace said Northland was among the areas worst affected by a shortage of nurses in aged care facilities.
“Our nurses are being actively approached by public hospitals because of the pay disparity so we are losing nurses everywhere, including in Northland. Issues around migrant nurses are being fast-tracked by the Government but there’s a lag.
“By the time these migrant nurses go through immigration and registration processes, there’s a lag of between six and nine months. Year after year, the aged care sector is underfunded, particularly nurses,” Wallace said.
Nurses are among 32 health sector roles the Government has added to the Straight to Residency pathway of the Green List to help prepare New Zealand’s health system for the coming winter.
Enrolled nurses, nurse practitioners, dentists and dental technicians, MRI scanning technologists, paramedics, optometrists and pharmacists to counselling are among those added to the list.
Under the interim pay equity agreement, newly-qualified registered nurses start work in a public hospital on $66,570 a year before overtime and allowances, and experienced nurses will be on a basic pay rate of up to $95,340 before overtime and allowances.
Newly-qualified registered nurses in 2017 started work on $49,449 a year before overtime and allowances. Experienced registered nurses in 2017 were on a basic pay rate of up to $66,755.
