Sick babies at risk in overcrowded units

A lack of specialist nurses is threatening the safety of the country's youngest patients and forcing hospitals to look overseas to fill staff vacancies in neonatal units.

Staff at the country's six neonatal intensive-care units all report being at or near capacity, and Middlemore Hospital is opening a second neonatal unit to cope with the demand.

Middlemore general manager of Kidz First and women's health Nettie Knetsch, said it had enough staff for their new unit at the opening, but as it expanded the number of cots available to newborns, they would need to look overseas to fill staff vacancies.

"And that's really an ongoing strategy ... because if you look at the delivery and neonatal staff [the country is] particularly short."

But New Zealand Medical Association deputy chairman and workforce spokesman Don Simmers warned that overseas recruitment of nurses would not be an indefinite option.

"New Zealand has relied far too much on that [overseas recruitment] in the past but we are now going through a worldwide shortage of medical staff."

Dr Simmers said it was a short-sighted solution. "We've got to really grow our own [workforce] ... otherwise these little tots will miss out."

He said not enough was being done to avoid the situation where staff were leaving the units because of stress.

Nurses Organisation chief executive Geoff Annals agreed, saying the two main reasons for the lack of nurses were pay rates - which were improving after negotiations last year with the Government - and job satisfaction.

"And that relates very much to staffing levels," he said.

"There are babies born everyday that need to be in a neonatal intensive care unit and there is a limited number of places and a fixed number of nurses with the skills to look after those babies ...

"So whenever there are more babies than there are nurses what it means is that some of those babies have to go somewhere else."

Mr Annals said babies were "regularly" shifted to other units around the country, and on rare occasions to Australia.

"And it can also mean babies moving out before it is ideal."

Mr Annals said "chronically understaffed" meant these situations would happen more often.

- NZPA