Exhausted Te Whatu Ora nurses will begin several local
strikes on Monday in response to their concerns about staff
shortages continuing to go unaddressed, NZNO says.
The
actions by Tōpūtanga Tapuhi Kaitiaki o Aotearoa New
Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO) members follow a 24-hour
nationwide strike by more than 36,000 Te Whatu nurses,
midwives, health care assistants and kaimahi hauora on 30
July.
NZNO delegate and District Nurse Lesley Pook
says North Shore District Nursing Service nurses will begin
a week-long “uniform strike” on Monday 18
August.
“Instead of uniforms, we will wear T-shirts
saying ‘Not Enough Nurses’. These are designed to prompt
patients and members of the public to ask us about the
conditions we work in.
“The North Shore District
Nursing Service is short of six staff. That leaves 26 nurses
to provide crucial community-based nursing such as complex
wound care, intravenous medication management, cancer
treatment support and palliative
care.
“Being short-staffed means we have
to ration care. We can’t see everyone when we need to and
have to rush the appointments of those we can get
to.”
Lesley Pook says without district
nursing services, many more patients would need
hospital-based care, putting further pressure on already
stretched wards and emergency departments.
Meanwhile,
nurses from two other regions go on strike next week to stop
redeployment to other areas of their respective hospitals in
order to fill staffing gaps caused by chronic
shortages.
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Cardiothoracic and Vascular Intensive Care
Unit (CVICU) nurses at Auckland City Hospital and their
colleagues from Ward 4 (Acute Surgical Services) at
Whangarei Hospital undertake a “redeployment strike” 7am on
Monday 18 August to 7am Saturday 23 August. This will enable
these nurses to stay in their wards with their patients with
CVICU patients in particular being very
vulnerable.
NZNO Ward 4 delegate Chantelle Thompson
says the strike involves NZNO members remaining at their
places of work, leaving only for genuine Life Preserving
Services, and focusing on the critically ill patients for
whom they are trained to care.
“Nurses are currently
sent to other areas that are short-staffed when required,
but this often results in their own areas becoming
understaffed. They are also sometimes seeing patients
outside their areas with no orientation and are often
unfamiliar with these patients.
“As the health system
stands, it does nothing to enforce safe staff-to-patient
ratios. This strike is about safe staffing and putting
patient safety first,” Chantelle Thompson
says.
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