New process offers nurses safe staffing

A new measure to ensure safe staffing levels will be achieved for nurses in public hospitals was announced by Health Minister David Clark yesterday.

The announcement comes two weeks after a nationwide nurses’ strike, which saw staff walk off the job for 24 hours following failed negotiations over pay and work conditions.

Clark said a joint accord between district health boards, the NZ Nurses Organisation and the Ministry of Health would ensure adequate staff cover by holding management to account.

‘‘It is clear we’ve been asking too much of our nurses and their workloads are not sustainable. The Government has heard the message from nurses and midwives loud and clear – we agree safe staffing must be a priority.’’

The district health boards revised their latest offer to the NZ Nurses Organisation on July 25, for which online voting will begin next week on July 31. Union members have rejected four previous offers.

Nurses had ‘‘over and over’’ again expressed concerns that the district health boards hadn’t always lived up to promises, Clark said.

Therefore, the new accord was separate to the most recent offer in July, to ensure any offer made would be followed through.

Nurses would see this was different to previous offers because not only was the Government committed to safe staffing, ‘‘but we are also committed to overseeing the process to ensure it happens’’, Clark said.

More formal and regular reporting, from nurses on the ward to directors and the health minister, would be one of the ways the accord ensured safe staffing by 2021.

Clark said the Government had already committed to funding an extra 500 nurses as part of the employment negotiations, and work would continue to ensure the DHBs ‘‘deliver now and into the future’’. DHBs and the ministry would work with the NZ Nurses Organisation to monitor the implementation of the safe staffing tool Care Capacity Demand Management (CCDM).

In addition, a strategy would be developed to help retain existing nurses and midwives in the public health service, and attract others back into the workforce.