Accord needed as a safeguard for nurses
Health Minister David Clark says a new accord on safe staffing is needed to stop busy nurses ‘‘running’’ between wards.
But at this point it is unclear how much implementing the protocol will cost.
The accord by the nurses’ union, the Ministry of Health and district health boards was signed yesterday morning at Parliament.
It commits DHBs to fully rolling out the dynamic safe staffing tool ‘‘Care Capacity Demand Management’’ (CCDM) by 2021, and staffing hospitals with nurses suggested by the tool.
CCDM is a jointlygoverned system to make sure there are enough nurses in every ward of a hospital. It uses software to work out where nurses are needed in real time (and in the future) and where they are not, allowing DHBs to staff shifts accordingly.
The tool is already in use in some DHBs but has not been rolled out consistently.
Clark said work was needed to make sure nurses weren’t running between wards. ‘‘We’ve been asking too much of our nurses for too long. I’ve heard stories from patients in wards about their concerns that they literally had seen their nurses running to try and get things done.
‘‘Safe staffing should be a given in our public health service, it should never be in doubt. I think 2021 is going to be challenging but achievable.’’
This implementation will come on top of $38 million earmarked for 500 new nurses, part of the latest offer from the Government in its ongoing industrial dispute with the nurses union.
The CCDM programme is likely to suggest more nurses are needed than the initial 500.
‘‘We’ll get a picture of what resource is required going into each budget round,’’ Clark said.
‘‘This will require new resource. But our health system requires further resource every year – we have a growing ageing population with more needs.
‘‘Every year, we do put more nurses into play but the story that CCDM tells us is that we need more still.’’
DHB representative Jim Green said the money available right now was a ‘‘good start’’.
He said CCDM was not a ‘‘silver bullet’’ but helped him allocate nursing resource very minutely. ‘‘It uses an acuity tool that measures shift-by-shift virtually hour by hour the amount of work going on.
‘‘For myself, I get a report three times a day in my hospital around what is actually happening – ward by ward – what the load is, and what the gap may be between the nursing available and the needs of the patient.
New Zealand Nurses Organisation chief executive Memo Musa said the accord was needed to make sure safe staffing promises – made for years – were actually implemented.
‘‘The slow pace of implementation has been unacceptable to NZNO. The end of this vicious cycle of underfunding and low morale as a result is in sight.’’