Nursing reports

MEDIA RELEASE                                                          16 February 2017

NZ must have a sustainable approach to nurse workforce

NZNO today launched an urgent discussion document about the issue of the unsustainable and fluctuating import of Internationally Qualified Nurses (IQN), in the context of New Zealand nurse graduate unemployment and the need for a better commitment to nurse career development.

The discussion document highlights issues about the pathways into nursing in
New Zealand for an internationally qualified nurse and how poor workforce planning and inconsistent policy undermines the sustainability of the nursing workforce. The discussion document can be found here.

NZNO Chief Executive Memo Musa says NZNO supports migrant nurses who are a vital part of the NZ health workforce but says many coming into aged care facilities are in positions that are not well supported or paid. In addition he says, DHB commitment to support NZ nurses into senior positions is lacking.

“We want to see greater self-sufficiency and sustainability for the New Zealand nursing workforce,” Memo Musa says.

“This means full employment of graduates, better pay at entry level nursing roles such as working in aged care, community care, primary care, including Iwi and Māori care sectors, and better mentoring and professional development planning offered to help retain senior nurses, including IQNs.

“NZNO advocates for a comprehensive overview of nursing supply and demand to reduce overreliance on migration and underinvestment in nurse education and employment to ensure a stable self-sustainable workforce.

“Nursing in New Zealand must become a fair playing field with wages and conditions that attract New Zealand nurses on an equal basis with international nurses.

“Currently Māori and Pacific graduate nurses are not being recruited as they should be, particularly into community care and primary care, including mental health and this means there can be a cultural mismatch in these areas of nursing.

“While some recruitment of international nurses is aimed to fill vacancies at the top levels of nursing, it appears this is misused via the accredited employer gateway, meaning New Zealand nurses are underutilised.

“With a greater focus on retaining the international nurses already here, but getting the numbers down overall, attracting more NZ nurses back into nursing, safe staffing and flexible work options, I am sure we can achieve an increase job placement and career satisfaction for NZ nurses,” Memo Musa said.

Media enquires: Karen Coltman 027 431 2617.

MEDIA RELEASE                                                     15 February 2017

Nurses support YesWeCare.nz campaign

NZNO along with the Public Service Association (PSA) present today at the Public Services International conference in Auckland to support its global campaign:

A better future with public health for all.

As part of this international campaign, the PSA today launched the nationwide ‘YesWeCare’ coalition for a fully funded health system to highlight how inadequate health funding is negatively affecting the public and workers they represent. They are taking 200 cardboard human figure cut-outs around New Zealand to illustrate the staffing gaps in the health sector workforce and state that this issue is as serious as the housing crisis.

The YesWeCare coalition includes 83,000 Kiwis working in health, ActionStation and the Peoples' Mental Health Review. Unions include the Council of Trade Unions, Public Service Association, E tū, First Union and Unite, and has the support of the New Zealand Nurses Organisation.

NZNO Chief Executive Memo Musa says District Health Boards have for some time been under pressure to balance their financial books and meet health targets, operating with shortfalls in health funding. He says this cannot go on and on and action is required now to stem the shortfalls.

Memo Musa said in a media statement last week:

“The Council of Trade Unions now calculate the shortfall in health spending to be $1.85b. This needs to be injected into Budget 2017 and to increase each year.

 “Our members have told us underfunding is now affecting patient safety, access to care, triggering care-rationing, health-worker burn out and straining the infrastructure.

“NZNO urge the government to make health funding, with a future vision, the number one 2017 general election priority,” Memo Musa said.

The NZNO member-led Shout Out for Health campaign launched on Friday
10 February mobilises and supports nurses, caregivers, midwives, healthcare assistants and kaiāwhina to tell their stories about the fractures in the health system.

 Our latest blog by NZNO delegate, Ben Rogers was posted today as part of the 2017 Shout Out campaign.

ENDS.

MEDIA RELEASE                                                                10 February 2017

$1.8b of government health funding and health workforce vision missing

The impact of inadequate health funding due to Government under spending is starting to cut, squeeze and burn, chief executive of the New Zealand Nurses Organisation, Memo Musa said today.

 “The 2016 Budget made it clear that the Government was not properly assessing actual funding needs of New Zealand’s health system and had not planned for future needs. We are now seeing the negative consequences of an inadequately funded health system,” Memo Musa said.

“The Council of Trade Unions now calculate the shortfall in health spending to be $1.8b. This needs to be injected into Budget 2017 and to increase each year.

 “Our members have told us underfunding is now affecting patient safety, access to care, triggering care-rationing, health-worker burn out and straining the infrastructure.

“NZNO urge the government to make health funding, with a future vision, the number one 2017 general election priority,” Memo Musa said.

The NZNO Shout Out for Health campaign launched today mobilises and supports nurses to tell their stories about the fractures in the health system.

“We are encouraging nurses to shout out for health, and speak up about impacts on the care they provide in communities, hospitals and primary care due to health underfunding,” Memo Musa said.

An NZNO nurse said today she feels stretched between meeting the needs of patients and fulfilling her responsibilities for the nursing team as a Duty Manager. She said it can be challenging to fulfil both without safe staffing levels. She has joined the Shout Out for Health campaign to tell her story, as she wants her team to be able to focus on caring for patients without stretching themselves too thin during shifts.

New Zealand needs:

• $1.8b injected into health and funding to keep up with need
• Full employment of graduate nurses and the funding of Nurse Entry Training into Practice funded for all graduates with a specific focus on retaining Māori and Pacific graduate nurses
• Planning and career development for nurses to be sure there are enough nurses at all levels
• Nurses supported to continue to upskill through postgraduate education and training to work in aged care, community and primary care.
• Improved linkage in service planning and estimation of health workforce requirements via the Care Capacity Demand Management System to achieve safe staffing levels
• A government-led examination of the mental health service delivery.

ENDS.

Memo Musa and Shout Out campaigners are available for comment

Please find attached the iDcare report of their independent review of the NZNO Cyber Incident of 1 November 2016.

Media Release                                                                23 December 2016

Nurses say children’s needs must come first at Christmas and New Year

The Christmas and New Year holidays are a time of excitement and summer fun for children but not when their caregivers have over indulged in alcohol and drugs and are neglecting to provide a safe and healthy environment for them.

NZNO chief executive Memo Musa says nurses deal with the impact of poor decisions by adults at Christmas and New Year, which results in young children having to hang around the hospital emergency department (ED) for hours while their caregivers get medical help.  He says sadly, children themselves too often end up in ED having been subjected to violence and abuse themselves.

“A volatile home environment of drunken adults arguing and threatening violence while under the influence of methamphetamine, for example, is a cocktail of misery for children,” Memo Musa said.

“Our nurses each Christmas and New Year deal with the unhealthy state some family members present to hospital emergency departments and see the negative, ripple effect on children of these emergencies.

“Children really suffer when their parents are intoxicated and are using drugs and suffer again when the parents are hungover and tired the next day. For our little kiwis to grow, they need a safe environment and a bedtime that means they are full of beans ready to soak up the long days of summer.

“This year I put the call out to all New Zealanders to indulge in their children’s needs more than their own so that our children can refresh, revive and grow this summer in time for new beginnings in early learning centres and schools.

“The message from New Zealand’s 50,000 strong nursing workforce is, ‘don’t be a bystander, when you know the children are around unsafe adults and being neglected, step up and make sure the children are safe and cared for,” Memo Musa said.

ENDS.

For urgent assistance

• Call the member support centre on 0800 28 38 48, then press 1 and leave a message.
• Your call will be returned to establish the nature of the support you need.

There will be no service for the period 24 December to 3 January but messages will be responded to soon after.

From 4 January, there will be some staff on call and available to support you for urgent matters.

Your call will be returned by one of the on call staff members.

For non-urgent, pay or membership subscription issues

• Call the member support centre on 0800 28 38 48, then press 2 and leave a message.
• Staff will clear non-urgent messages during the holiday period, however depending on the nature of your enquiry a response may not be provided until our offices re-open.

How to determine whether an enquiry is urgent or not

A matter is urgent;

IF the incident is regarding serious misconduct or patient harm and/or involves: Police, Coroner, Nursing Council, Midwifery Council, Health and Disability commissioner, witness in court; and

the meeting/action required is before NZNO offices re-open on Monday 16 January 2017; and

the member or their delegate cannot delay the requested meeting/action required until after NZNO offices re-open

OR

if the matter is regarding an unavoidable situation that could affect the member's practice or safety e.g. ongoing boundaries issue, unsafe work situation or unsafe employer instruction.

Media Release                                                      15 December 2016

Government leaves nursing graduates languishing again

In response to the November figures of graduate nursing placements via the ACE scheme, the New Zealand Nurses Organisation once again calls for sufficient funding to ensure all graduates have the guarantee of a nursing placement that includes further training and mentoring support.

NZNO Associate Professional Nursing Manager Hilary Graham-Smith says that surely just over half having employment, leaving in excess of 500 new graduates out of the health workforce at this point is not acceptable to New Zealanders.

“Hundreds of enthusiastic, trained New Zealand nurses are looking for work and are just left languishing. This is a real problem,” Ms Graham-Smith says.

“We have seen very little improvement in the number of graduate placements over the last four years. While some DHBs and some Directors of Nursing have worked hard to increase intake, overall far too many new graduate nurses remain without appropriate employment on completion of their degree.

“Evidently there is little government will to fund a programme that means all new graduate nurses have a position in a new entry training programme.

NZNO says the fact that many find work over the ensuing year is not necessarily something to celebrate when it knows graduates end up in employment situations (outside of NetP) where there is insufficient registered nurse support. In these circumstances newly trained nurses are expected to take on too much responsibility and consequently NZNO is aware they then get into difficulty, become overwhelmed and sometimes leave the profession.

“Every newly registered nurse and enrolled nurse deserves a place in a NetP programme.  New Zealanders should be asking the government why it doesn’t value New Zealand graduate nurses enough to fund all graduates in the training programme,” Ms Graham-Smith said.

ENDS.

MEDIA RELEASE                                                3 December 2016

Hawke’s Bay teenagers get on track to healthy adulthood

NZNO congratulates Hawke’s Bay District Health Board for their wisdom in taking a preventative approach to healthcare by offering hundreds of Hawke’s Bay youth zero fees for visits to the doctor.

NZNO Kaiwhakahaere Kerri Nuku is a representative on the Māori Relationship Board that supports the pilot scheme of free doctor’s visits for 13 – 17 year olds in areas where the cost of going to the doctor is a barrier to good healthcare. General practices that opt into the programme also sign up to providing a range of youth friendly clinical health services. It is projected to cost about $582,000 over a full financial year.

“There is a worrying gap in childhood and adolescence primary healthcare because of cost becoming a barrier to going to the doctor. This new option of free GP visits goes some way to bridging the gap and will mean our teenagers can take care of their health more easily,” Kerri Nuku said.

“I encourage parents to take their children to the doctor as necessary because not only will their children get great medical suport, their teens will naturally pay more attention to their wellbeing and this will set them up better for adulthood.  

“NZNO is fully behind the push for good community healthcare and keeping people out of hospital and empowered to keep well.

“We would be delighted to see free doctor visits for teens rolled out across New Zealand and adopted by Government as a national fully-funded policy. We will be pressuring the government to fully fund universal free healthcare for teenagers,” Kerri Nuku said.

Ends.

Media enquiries Karen Coltman: 027 431 2617.

Media Release                                                                  24 November 2016

One small step for Caregivers, one giant step for womankind

NZNO commends the New Zealand government for setting an international precedent by today agreeing a pathway for New Zealanders to achieve equal pay between various traditionally male and female jobs.

Over the year, unions have been presenting to government the struggle for equal pay for caregivers, most of whom are women. Historically traditional ‘women’s work’ has been underpaid and undervalued in New Zealand, which not only has been unfair but has caused women to leave their jobs.

“Today’s announcement that government agree that equal pay for women must be achieved and the setting out of the mechanisms to do that is welcome and a big step forward for New Zealand women,” said Industrial Services Manager Cee Payne

“The government agrees that there is a traditional, sexist bias against paying women proper pay for roles that are seen as ‘women’s work’ and it and the unions want this attitude to women workers stamped out.

 “This commitment by government to enable people like Kristine Bartlett to be paid properly for their work means other hard working women won’t be forced to leave their profession as they are now.

 “This is better for business and better for those being cared for. Being in a workplace where you are paid little more than the minimum wage when you are taking care of people’s parents and grandparents hour by hour, is demoralising and demeaning.

NZNO does not however support the government position of a hierarchy of comparators, believing that the most appropriate comparators should be used for each situation.

But says women in all sorts of jobs should now be able to draw on the skills and responsibilities they have in their jobs and compare them to men in similar roles and their union reps. can proactively and legally through the Employment Relations Authority work to close the gender pay gap.

 “These equal pay principles are a victory for women and progressive for all men, women and children who live in a country proud of its gender equality values and forward thinking. The government has finally put their stamp of approval on equal pay principles and this clarifies and strengthens the 1972 Equal Pay Act,” she said.

Ends.

Please find attached the PDF of the Terms of Reference and steps of the review of the cyber incident of Tuesday 1 November.