Nurse Pay Gap Closes Family Planning Clinics

This is what a pay gap for nurses looks like at Family
Planning. A closed clinic with no clients and no staff to
see them even if they did turn up.

This
isn’t a small clinic in a provincial town – this is the
waiting room of our Wellington Clinic which was closed for 5
days in August this year and three days this month so
far.

Across the country, chief executive Jackie Edmond
says Family Planning clinics were closed for a total of 64
days during August this year. And, she attributes these
closures directly to the growing pay gap between primary
care nurses and their hospital counterparts.

“Around
80 per cent of our consultations are with a nurse – so when
we can’t retain or recruit, in large part because of the
pay gap with our hospital colleagues – our ability to offer
services is hugely disrupted,” Ms Edmond says. “Currently,
just over 24 per cent of our nursing positions are
vacant.

“We worry about this impact which pushes out
wait times. We know that young people are most impacted by
the closures.

“About 1 in 6 of the young people (16 to
19 years old) we see don’t have another regular health
provider and 1 in 5 of them don’t know where else to go to
get contraception. When we are forced to close clinics
because we don’t have staff to open them, it is these
young people that are at most risk of unintended pregnancy
or sexually transmitted infection,” Ms Edmond
says.

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