Nurses join national protests for change

The chants were loud and the message to the Government clear: New Zealand nurses deserve more.

About 100 nurses, midwives and their supporters marched through Nelson’s CBD on Saturday, calling for better pay and safer staffing levels for the country’s frontline healthcare workers.

The march was one of 15, including one at Parliament, organised on International Nurses Day to highlight the struggles nurses say they face in New Zealand hospitals.

Nursing student Yasmeen Jones-Chollet, who co-organised the event with Maria Briggs, spoke at the conclusion of the Nelson march, at the foot of the Church Steps, about the difficulties nurses and patients faced in wards that were understaffed.

‘‘Many nurses believe, or are led to believe, that codes of confidentiality designed to protect patient privacy mean that we cannot speak about what we are facing at work,’’ she said.

But if nurses remained silent, there would be no change and patients would continue to be viewed as a ‘‘checklist’’ by the health system, Jones-Chollet said.

‘‘We have heard stories from nurses who are unable to sleep at night, knowing that they are unable to provide the compassionate care that they want to give. Many of us are suffering from stress, anxiety, compassion fatigue, depression and burnout as a result of having to work this way and under these conditions.’’

One nurse, who wished to remain anonymous, said she had been nursing for more than 20 years, and patients were getting ‘‘watered-down’’ care due to understaffing.

‘‘You are torn between tasks and actually caring – you know, being by their side to provide the spiritual side of the caring and make them feel they are important,’’ she said.

She said she would wake in the early hours worrying about the ‘‘little bombshells’’ – changes to care levels and staffing arrangements.

‘‘You are so fatigued because you’re having to pick up another night of on-call, which means that above your fulltime employment, you could be doing another 30 hours of on-call as well.’’

She said nurses struggled to function and nurse safely while coping with the hours.

The nurse said she was ‘‘realistic about what’s going on in the DHBs’’, but hoped that the protests would be taken seriously and that the new Government would be ‘‘in long enough’’ to make changes.