Nurse contract cut disappoints

"Palmerston North people have access to services that rural people would love to access." Sharon Wards, Tararua Health Group

Tararua’s mayor says rural health services in the district are being dealt another blow, as the Midcentral District Health Board makes cuts.

Midcentral has pulled the contract for its cancer community nurse role in the Tararua District.

However, Tararua mayor Tracey Collis said conversations on it were ‘‘certainly not over’’.

Collis said she was ‘‘very concerned’’ because the loss of contract meant there was only a single Cancer Society field officer left to handle a large case load of cancer patients in the area.

A Midcentral spokeswoman said the cancer role was being combined with other nurse roles.

Funding had not been reduced and there was no plan to do so, she said.

Although the community still had field officer Shirley Walker, Collis said Walker was already ‘‘run off her feet’’ at times.

Tararua Health Group chief executive Sharon Wards was disappointed with the decision.

There were about 400 people with cancer in the area, she said.

The axed role was a fulltime clinical nurse specialist who worked four days a week for Wards and was subcontracted to Rangitane once a week.

The community-based role meant the nurse was able to go into patients’ homes free of charge.

Although patients could still see nurses in the area for diabetes, cardiac and respiratory-related problems, cancer patients would now either have to pay to go to a GP or travel to Palmerston North for treatment, Wards said.

She accepted tough decisions had to be made about funding, but rural areas across New Zealand were missing out.

‘‘Palmerston North people have access to services that rural people would love to access.’’

The nurse position was first made after the community identified a need for it.

Wards said she was trying to ‘‘cobble together’’ funds to keep some sort of free treatment.

She said there was already a lack of GPS in the area.

‘‘I can’t get enough GPS. That’s why these nurse roles are so critical.’’

Walker was also disappointed. ‘‘I’m really disappointed that they would think that we don’t need that person.’’

Walker has been a cancer support person for about 101⁄2 years.

Her job was mainly about visiting patients and listening to their concerns. But she was not allowed to offer cancer patients medical advice, she said.

The community nurse had helped fill those gaps.

Walker’s workload was now ‘‘definitely going to be large’’.

‘‘It does worry me to think that locals will be without.’’