Hutt Valley/Rotorua/Tauranga NZNO Members To Strike Tomorrow

Hutt Valley/Rotorua/Tauranga NZNO members employed by Te Whatu Ora will tomorrow (Friday 13 December) strike for four hours over patient safety concerns following recent collective bargaining with Health NZ.

New Zealand Nurses Organisation Tōpūtanga Tapuhi Kaitiaki o Aotearoa (NZNO) members fear Te Whatu Ora’s plans to pause a key component of its safe staffing programme put patient and whānau safety and wellbeing at risk.

NZNO Lakes delegate and spokesperson Lyn Logan is striking because Te Whatu Ora's constant financial constraints impact the care she and her colleagues provide their patients.

"For me, it’s about informing the public who use health services and my community, that if I do not strike then I am not committed to improving health services in my region.

"I want to give our community the best care I can when they come into the hospital. At present I cannot do this," Lyn Logan says.

Tauranga delegate Helena Joyce says she is striking because as a nurse she’s witnessed how dangerous understaffing can be.

"Nurses get overworked and then can make mistakes."

"Years of effort have gone into CCDM FTE calculations and now they are putting it on hold. There seems to be no point to this except to normalise understaffing," Helena Joyce says.

Hutt delegate Nathan Clark says it's about patient safety, ensuring there are enough skilled healthcare workers at the patient’s bedside, in the community, in people’s homes and where they are needed.

"The approach Health NZ has taken to put a halt to increase staffing levels; using a tool they agreed upon shows they really don't put patient safety and care at the forefront of what they do.

"To stop the recruitment of health care workers because they only see a cost and not an asset or value in skilled people is an absolute insult," Nathan Clark says.

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