Nursing reports

New Zealand Nurses Organisation media release, 14 January 2019

The New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO) supports the New Zealand Resident Doctors Association (NZRDA) in its industrial dispute with District Health Boards (DHBs) and warns that unsafe working conditions imposed on resident medical officers (RMOs) would impact on the quality of health care in New Zealand.

NZNO Industrial Advisor Lesley Harry says DHBs are now insisting on reducing the terms and conditions agreed with RMOs in the 2016/17 multi-employer collective agreement (MECA). These reductions include less safe rostering, reductions to callout pay and RMOs being redeployed without their agreement.

“This is completely unacceptable when we are currently facing a serious shortage of RMOs and medical specialists across the board resulting in inadequate and unsafe staffing levels.

“Demand on hospital services continues to increase, which means we need to be forward thinking. We should be attracting and retaining trainee doctors and treating them with respect because better staffing levels are vital in sustaining health services.”

Lesley Harry said nurses can testify that what doctors are saying about short staffing and burnout is a fact, and that NZNO members in hospitals increasingly report situations where staffing levels and working hours mean patients are not receiving the standards of care they should expect.

“As health care professionals, doctors' and nurses’ first priority is meeting the needs of every patient coming through the hospital door. We don’t want to see our best and brightest unable to provide the quality of care they are trained for because they are exhausted or do not feel respected.” 

She said it was imperative these issues were sorted quickly before the existing MECA expires in February.

“RMOs move around between employers as part of their work and if an acceptable agreement isn’t negotiated in time they could be vulnerable to any number of unreasonable conditions imposed upon them by employers.

“This will just continue to exacerbate the problem and lead to poorer relationships, working conditions and poorer health care for New Zealanders. The longer this dispute goes on, the more likely DHB doctors will look to greener pastures.

“We urge the DHBs to listen to the concerns of RMOs and to settle this dispute in an acceptable manner. This is ultimately about the wellbeing of everyone in New Zealand so we support the NZRDA in putting patient safety first.”

1 August 2013:

The New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO) is extremely disappointed and disturbed that Rymans is publically blaming nurses for failure of care in their Malvina Major facility in Wellington.

NZNO industrial advisor for the aged care sector, David Wait says “All NZNO members will be appalled by the treatment of the elderly woman at the centre of this case and we support the family in their call for change and improvements to the sector.”

“However this must not be considered an isolated incident. Residential aged care in New Zealand is in crisis as the Human Rights Commission Caring counts report identified independently last year.”

“The lack of mandatory staffing levels, inadequate registered nursing hours, training requirements and pay rates for carers on, or near the minimum wage, clearly show how undervalued this work is.”

“Nurses and carers simply cannot provide the care which they want to provide if the facility is understaffed and under resourced.  Residents have complex health and personal care needs. Evidence demonstrates that patient outcomes are negatively impacted when there are insufficient regulated nurses. We have heard from a former Ryman’s staffer that on night shifts there is only one registered nurse rostered on for the entire facility – that’s one nurse responsible for over 200 residents and patients, ” says Lorraine Ritchie, NZNO professional nursing adviser.

“There is something seriously wrong with the sector when taxpayers provided $800 million to Rymans last year to provide care for our most vulnerable elderly citizens and at the same time they post profits of $100 million. And that massive profit is up 19 percent on the previous year, and Ryman’s eleventh year of profit increases.”

“NZNO members have been lobbying for Government intervention to address this situation through better transparency in funding (including targeted funding for pay increases), the development of enforceable staffing levels, and the requirement of all workers to be trained. The Government must step up and make the changes needed to improve things for our elderly.”
 

26 November 2012:

The New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO) says that extensive discussion between unions and Waikato DHB has failed to reassure nurses and allied health staff that their work is taken seriously by the DHB.

The DHB is proposing to cut eight staff at a specialist rehabilitation care unit.

NZNO organiser, Selina Robinson says, “Although over 60 submissions were submitted during the ‘consultation’ process, most of them against the proposal to cut staff, there is no evidence that views contrary to the DHB’s have been taken into consideration.”

"Cutting eight staff from this specialist unit will compromise the quality of care and outcomes for patients."

“It is clear that the proposal to reduce staff has no support from anyone involved in the direct operation of the wards concerned and for very good reason,” Robinson says, “There are better ways to make sure hospitals are running efficiently and that patients are getting the care they need, when they need it.”

“NZNO is currently working in partnership with DHBs to make sure patients get safe and effective care. The safe staffing initiative, care capacity demand management (CCDM), ensures that the right number of skilled and appropriately qualified staff are available to provide care to meet patient demand and minimise the risk of harm.”

“We believe CCDM provides the health system with the right tools to decide the right number of skilled staff to provide the right care to patients. Waikato DHB needs to come on board with the CCDM approach and start making staffing decisions in a sensible and sustainable way.”

22 November 2012:

The New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO) welcomes the 2011/12 Serious and Sentinel events report “Making our hospitals safer”.

The report contains the serious adverse events that have happened in hospitals over the past year. This year’s report shows that the largest categories of harm have occurred either as a result of a fall (47 percent) or from delays to treatment due to what is described as “breakdowns in hospital systems”.

NZNO professional nursing adviser, Kate Weston says, “Patient falls are an indicator of inadequate staffing levels. The pattern and frequency of harm from patient’s falling and “systems breakdowns” is attributable to a system that is not properly resourced to provide patients with the right care at the right time and in the right place.”

“NZNO believes the increase in inpatient suicides and patients “going missing’ from inpatient mental health units is likely a staffing issue as well. We support the commission’s intention to investigate this tragic issue further.”

“Inadequate staffing can also result in late monitoring of a patient’s vital signs. The results of this show in the report in cases where appropriate and timely treatment has not been provided and harm has occurred,” Weston says. 

“NZNO is currently working in partnership with DHBS to solve that problem and make sure patients don’t come to harm. The safe staffing initiative, care capacity demand management (CCDM) ensures that the right number of skilled and appropriately qualified staff are available to provide care to meet patient demand and minimise the risk of harm.”

“We believe CCDM provides the health system with the right tools to provide the right care to patients. We are confident that future reports will show a marked decrease in falls, medication and treatment errors and “systems breakdowns” when all DHBs come on board with CCDM.”