New Zealand Nurses Organisation strike on 28 November. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
Health NZ has accused nurses of failing to honour their commitment to provide so-called "life preserving services" during a partial strike.
However, the New Zealand Nurses Organisation is blaming Health NZ for rejecting a plan for dedicated on-call staff to cover gaps during their two weeks of "working to rule".
For the last two weeks, 37,500 thousand nurses, midwives and healthcare assistants employed by Health NZ have been refusing to do extra hours or to be redeployed to other areas.
Whangārei Hospital nurse Rachel Thorn, a union delegate, said before the strike, nurses offered to have a pool of on-call staff available in each region to deliver life-preserving services if required.
That included urgent diagnostic procedures, crisis interventions or treatments.
Instead Health NZ opted for an "emergency plan", which meant that if all other options had been exhausted, managers had to call a union rep, who would then ask members to volunteer.
"So it was a very sketchy, and I would say pretty dangerous, plan which obviously didn't work as well as they hoped in some areas, and to be honest, that's their responsibility."
It was hard to say why Health NZ had decided not to take up the union offer, Thorn said.
"I can only conclude it was to do with budget, because they would have had to pay people to be on-call. But it wasn't much, we're talking $8 a hour.
"They believe - or at least they choose say - that there are enough nurses in the system and we know there aren't.
"There are so many gaps being plugged by nurses doing 'goodwill shifts' to support colleagues and keep patients safe."
Health NZ manager Robyn Shearer said the agency respected union members' right to take lawful strike action, "but any refusal to undertake life preserving services creates serious patient-safety risks".
"We did not support union's request of having a dedicated pool of members for life preserving services as there is no way to predict staff skills needed for life-preserving services, and the nature of the partial strike action meant that all staff would be on site and available to deliver care."
"A dedicated pool would also reduce the number of staff available to care for patients and require the cancellation of all elective surgery and outpatient appointments for each shift for a two-week period."
Because Health NZ and the union were unable to reach agreement, they took the "unprecedented" move of asking the chief medical officers to adjudicate the arrangements for life-preserving services in each district.
Health NZ had also raised concerns with the union about "an unusually high number of staff taking sick leave in some districts", Shearer said.
Thorn claimed management's entire plan for the strike relied on the goodwill of nurses - "or business as usual".
"I would say the sick call increase is nurses feeling exhausted and burned out, and the emergency plan didn't work out how Health NZ wanted it to. But that's because they refused to negotiate with us about a safe plan."
It was "a bit rich" of Health NZ to complain about nurses refusing to plug the holes in its roster during the strike, she said.
"Funnily enough, that's what the strike was about: to highlight the gaps and not fill them so that Health NZ could actually see where those gaps are. And it's certainly highlighted the chronic short-staffing."
In Northland, those gaps were particularly evident in the rural hospitals, the orthopaedic ward, the emergency department, surgery and post-operative care, as well as the neonatal ward, she said.
Health NZ "abusing" nurses' goodwill - union
Nurses organisation industrial adviser David Wait said the adjudication laid out how Health NZ could request life-preserving services - but it did not trump the right to strike.
"And they knew beforehand that they couldn't compel members to do that. So they were really abusing the goodwill of nurses by putting in life-preserving services request that undermined the right to strike."
Wait said Health NZ management had also tried to require nurses calling in sick for one day to produce a medical certificate, which the union overturned.
Meanwhile, the contract dispute drags on, with no more dates for talks set currently.
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