Nurses quit, seven go across the ditch

Twenty of Wellington’s emergency department nurses – a fifth of the team – have quit in the past three months, and seven nurses across the hospital have left for Australia in the past three weeks in search of better wages and conditions.

Experienced nurses, including four in senior positions, accounted for most of the resignations.

‘‘We are not able to say with any certainty why these nurses have resigned, except that there was a range of contributing factors,’’ Capital & Coast District Health Board director of provider services Joy Farley said.

‘‘These include pursuit of other opportunities, family reasons, and the house and rent prices – which are not unique to Wellington and are being seen across the country.’’

Farley said 22 of the emergency department’s 97 nurses had left since the beginning of the year.

Multiple sources told The Dominion Post about 20 of those were in the past three months.

Nineteen of these roles had been filled and three senior roles were still empty.

The Nurses Organisation said the churn reflected the pressure nurses are under.

Tens of thousands of whom walked off the job for eight hours on Wednesday in a nationwide strike.

Jo Coffey, an organiser from the Nurses Organisation said, the emergency department was regularly understaffed and was operating at 101 per cent capacity during Wednesday’s strike.

‘‘We now need to double the nurses on shift,’’ she said. ‘‘The churn is high in the ED.’’

District health boards were trying to fill vacancies, but there weren’t enough nurses in the country.

The surgical and neonatal intensive care unit were also under a lot of pressure, she said. ‘‘I am finding nurses in tears sometimes after shifts,’’ she said.

Wellington’s housing crisis has also driven nurses from the city, with nearly half of the new bowel screening programmes nursing team leaving because of the high cost of living this year.

Still, hiring more nurses wouldn’t solve all the problems occurring in overcrowded emergency departments, Coffey said.

‘‘Then we get space issues. We need the whole environment to change, it is just a nightmare.’’

Palmerston North junior nurse Georgia, 23, is a Kiwi nurse who plans to move to Australia in the next month.

She would nearly double her $50,000 salary working as an agency nurse in Sydney, she said. .

‘‘Every shift I feel physically and emotionally drained,’’ she said.

‘‘I never get the chance to provide support and reassurance for my patients.’’

She said it was sad she and her colleagues were looking to move across the ditch.

‘‘We have just been through a pandemic, we need to be having a health system that attracts nurses.’’

‘‘I am finding nurses in tears sometimes after shifts.’’

Jo Coffey Nurses Organisation