By RNZ reporters
Not enough nurses and not enough money - that is the diagnosis of the Nurses Organisation for what ails the health system.
Thousands of them walked off the job at 9am Wednesday for 24 hours over their deadlocked contract negotiations, which have dragged on since September.
Health Minister Simeon Brown insists the pay offer on the table is fair, and accuses the union of hurting thousands of patients with its hard-line tactics.
On the picketline in Wellington today, Pip Cresswell told RNZ she quit her job as a charge nurse because she was sick of not being allowed to fill vacancies and working more than 60 hours a week to cover.
"We've got 7000 staff in Capital and Coast Hutt Valley and we've got 1000 positions empty. But we're being replaced at the rate that people left last week, so we're never going to get the 1000 people back."
Four bus-loads of nurses, midwives and healthcare assistants from Wellington joined forces with colleagues from Hutt Hospital to march past Parliament to offices shared by the Health Ministry and Te Whatu Ora at the top of Molesworth Street.
Hutt emergency department nurse Seteli Pelasio said the risk to patients was the worst she had seen in 30 years.
Nurses and healthcare assistants strike outside Britomart Station in Auckland. Photo: Wallace Chapman
"Bloody scary, it is so scary at the moment. Not just the lack of staffing, but the experience, the staff mix on the floor."
Specialist diabetes nurse prescriber Anne-Marie Frew said the nurse shortage meant there was a two-year wait list for patients to get insulin pumps in the region.
"I'm scared, I'm really worried about risk. I'm working in diabetes where we've had no increase in our nursing resources for 16 years, despite the exponential growth in people with diabetes, and the technology."
Labour's health spokesperson Dr Ayesha Verrall joined the march past the Beehive.
"Some of the nurses here today I worked with when I was a specialist at Wellington Hospital. I'm really concerned about some of the things they have to say about understaffing in public hospitals. We can all see that things are getting worse rather than better."
Brown blamed the Nurses Organisation for postponing care for 4300 patients.
"These are patients who've been waiting far too long on wait lists, who have now been told they have to wait longer. That's the unfortunate reality of the nursing union deciding to strike today."
Nurses Organisation chief executive Paul Goulter, who was among the 500-strong picket outside Waikato Hospital today, blamed the government for short-changing the public health system.
Nurses protest about dangerous staffing levels at the Hamilton Gardens. Photo: Libby Kirkby-McLeod / RNZ
"The issue is it's all about the money and funding and the government has to stump up to restore safe staffing at our hospitals."
Staffing levels are safe - Health NZ chief executive
However, Health NZ chief executive Dale Bramley said he was confident that Health NZ employed enough nurses to staff its hospitals safely.
The agency had employed 3000 extra nurses since 2023, with another 2000 in the in the recruitment pipeline, while the number of beds had only gone up by 175 over the last few years, he said.
Objective measures of patient safety - including deaths among inpatients, pressure sores and cardiac arrests - had all improved.
Protesters in Wellington. Photo: Samuel Rillstone / RNZ
"There's a difference between a subjective measure of how you're experiencing the day, and an objective measure of a clinical outcome.
"And on most of those objective measures, we would say that patient safety in the last five years is stable or improving."
Wait times for elective procedures had also improved in the last five months - but the industrial action this week was going to increase wait times for thousands of patients, putting them at risk, he said.
"The more people have to wait for essential care, the more risk sits in those lists."
Yet nurses on the front-line say the pressure has increased.
Waikato nurse Kristi Barthel gets multiple texts a day asking for her to work extra shifts.
"We're all burned out because we're doing extra hours, over-time and we're not getting paid for our over-time, and having to pick up extra shifts."
Nayda Heays had just come off a 12-hour shift at Hastings Hospital's intensive care unit.
Nurses and supporters protest at Waikato Hospital, Photo: Libby Kirkby-McLeod
If she were a construction worker instead of a nurse, she would "not be having to argue for basic health and safety" measures, she noted drily.
"I'm tired now, and I'm going to spend the next four hours with my colleagues getting it out to our community that this has to stop."
Te Arohanui Ngarimu, who has been nursing in Hawke's Bay for 20 years, said there were more patients now, and they were sicker.
"When they come in, they're really sick and we're really stretched because we're short. It really affects our health because we just keep running, and we're not an Ever Ready battery."
Dunedin Hospital delegate Robyn Hewlett was among 200 protesters who marched through the city this morning.
She works in a busy surgical ward, where patients can wait up to five days for surgery due to staff shortages.
Nurses strike on Auckland's North Shore. Photo: RNZ/Calvin Samuel
"They are nil by mouth from 2am and then at 8pm they might get cancelled. So they haven't eaten all day, and then they may get a meal if food has been kept for them. And then they're nil by mouth again from 2am."
Registered mental health nurse Mitchell said colleagues on the ward when patient numbers rose, there could be assaults and other problems.
"There's more aggression potentially or escalations of sometimes violence in those spaces and when there's less staff to be able to manage and to create a safe environment, it can be quite dangerous for people."
Hewlett worried people would be put off nursing as a career.
"Why train to be a nurse when ... there's no position for you at the end of your three years training and you pay high fees at the polytechs or the universities and then you've got no job to pay for your student loans?"
Final-year nursing student Bailey said she was fighting for her future, with fewer than half of mid-year graduates offered hospitals jobs so far.
Staff nurses were flat-out trying to care for patients and teach nursing students like herself, she said.
"There's not enough of them, it's such a struggle and it's so hard being a student and seeing that, and knowing that in a few years that will be me - if I get a job."
In an interview with Morning Report today, Health NZ's acting chief clinical officer, Dame Helen Stokes-Lampard was asked whether Health NZ had the money to hire the nurses it needed.
"We're all in a fiscally constrained environment, Health NZ is in a fortunate position at the moment where we have plenty of nurses willing to work with us, and we're keen to employ them where we can."
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