The real Nurse Florence speaks

Sometimes Nurse Florence wishes for a car accident before she gets to work, the fear of injury outweighed by the constant fear she lives in doing rounds in an under-staffed pressure cooker.

‘‘The mad thing is I would end up in hospital anyway,’’ she says. ‘‘I have had regular nightmares of my time nursing for the past five years. For two years I would throw up or feel nauseated before every shift. Some shifts we work 12 hours with no break. There is no other choice.’’

Nurse Florence is not a real person. She is a Facebook persona, a composite of the nation’s nurses crafted by two nurses at opposite ends of New Zealand.

She allows nurses the chance to share the work conditions and emotional challenges they face every shift, without fear of repercussions.

After only a fortnight their Facebook page, ‘‘New Zealand please hear our voice’’, has shot to 37,000 members, and an online petition asking for better pay and work conditions has more than 10,000 signatures.

The two nurses behind the alias, who call themselves Nurse North and Nurse South, say public support for a national protest rally is overwhelming. The march will likely take place on May 12, International Nurses Day.

‘‘The two of us felt that it was time for the nurses of New Zealand to have an independent voice and that it was time for change,’’ Nurse North says. ‘‘Why use an alias? We have heard many stories about nurses being bullied or persecuted for speaking out about work conditions, and we want to reduce the chances of that happening to us.’’

Nurse North says the ultimate goal is to unite nurses to fight for a healthcare system the country can be proud of, but nurses are not always able to speak up. The nature of their work means they just get on with the job, and they often put patient needs ahead of their own.

Nurse South says the protest march should give the new Government a greater understanding of the profession’s understaffing. Nurses had not had a fair pay increase since 2005.