Anne Daniels, President
NZNO Tōpūtanga Tapuhi Kaitiaki o Aotearoa

As I write the turmoil and peril of the New Zealand health system is evident. Desperate multiple txts going out to nurses every day offering overtime are now the norm. Inequity is rife as evidenced by the very different additional workforce payments offered to doctors that perpetuates the gender discrimination and undervaluing of our profession.

Nursing students are being asked to do patient watches for grocery vouchers with little training to conduct a role requiring skill and experience (putting them at risk) – and often carried out by our amazing health care assistants.

The pressure on NZNO members, no matter where they work in the system, to do more with less (and less and less) is unrelenting. What does this mean for our wellbeing when working in a failing system, our mental health when we feel guilty for giving ourselves a few hours to sleep, eat, and be with our families, instead of going back to help our overwhelmed colleagues? How do we get off this downward spiral?

We are struggling to survive but NOW is the right time to take the appropriate action to correct the situation. Those who accomplish change are willing to engage in the struggle. To survive we must collectively find ways to work together to create the change that needs to happen.

Now is the time to Rise Up! Every member, everywhere must become actively engaged in the Maranga Mai! campaign for change and stand strong until the changes we need are embedded in our workplaces, our work, our contracts and in legislation. We must establish cohesive communication networks so we can work across the public/private/tertiary/primary care divides.

We must also be cognisant of the opportunities Māori models of organising and campaigning offer us all. Maranga Mai! is a national campaign conducted through local events led locally by leaders who are inclusive of NZNO members across all sectors within their local region. Every member needs to step up and act.

One example is occurring in Whangarei Hospital Emergency Department. The nurses decided to work to their contracted FTE only. The expectation that nurses will always step up to fill the roster gaps is now being challenged. These nurses understand that if you continue to do what you always have done nothing will change. They are now supporting each other to put their wellbeing first and nursing shortage issues are being made visible by their action. And their action is being supported by nurses across New Zealand.

Another example is what nurses and health care assistants in Canterbury did. They were not being paid properly or on time as legally required and a local protest was arranged after the employer refused to engage. They organised locally through their networks, social media, radio and tv, to bring the issue to the publics’ attention nationally. The DHB representatives met the NZNO members on the picket line and agreed to work together to resolve the issues.

Where there is anger born of injustice, discrimination and racism; agitation and action by each one of us working together will bring hope. The realisation of beneficial change will only come if we harness our anger and make it work for us. Maranga Mai!

Kerri Nuku, Kaiwhakahaere
Tōpūtanga Tapuhi Kaitiaki o Aotearoa NZNO

Health is the ultimate political football in Aotearoa. Every party in power tries to use it to their advantage, to impose their short-term ideals onto health and – even worse – to only focus on the surface issues so they look like they’ve done something. We can’t let politicians keep doing this at the expense of people’s health and lives.

Opposition parties are willing to tear each other down over failures, even though they’ve all helped gut the system we have today. Yet when in power, rather than be accountable and effective, they tinker around the edges, failing to address the systemic issues.

Politicians go on three yearly cycles, during which time they’re mostly better at destroying than creating. But unlike them, our voice and our work is constant. We must urge for a common public health approach based on the idea that all people deserve the best health care, and all workers deserve the best conditions. If we don’t take control of the political narrative, governments will continue trying to distract people from the real health issues.

To do this we must fight the anti-Māori and anti-union rhetoric on the right. We need to stake our claim as experts of our own field and fiercely protect our profession. The current workforce crisis is going to require some immediate fixes and a long-term strategy which will require nursing to be part of the planning.

COVID has brutally exposed the nursing shortage. While the obvious course should have been to build the nursing workforce, this has not been the case. Instead, changes to the Health Act further undermined and eroded nursing by extending the scope of an unregulated workforce to bridge the shortfall.

We have a 4000+ nursing workforce shortage and the international Council of Nurses reports a 4.6 million nursing shortfall worldwide, so I repeat: if nursing is going to be the political football we need to control the narrative!

Political parties need to consider how we are going to make nursing attractive again, how are we going to make nursing a career choice for school leavers, support them through their training and graduate them into good jobs. How are we going to support and retain the nurses currently in the workforce by valuing their work, protecting their health and safety, including deconstructing the pay disparities that continue?

I have been inundated with calls of immense distress from nurses, health care assistants and kaimahi hauora upset and powerless to speak out against what they are witness to: care choices and negative outcomes driven as a direct result of nursing shortage.

If only our nursing crisis was as simple as a hospital drama tv show  – but  when a nursing shift finishes the emotional debrief plays out in your head hours after leaving the workplace, or wakes you from your sleep as you try to remember whether or not you signed that form, or what you need to do today, or whether there will be enough staff on the next shift.

Nursing is not a drama – nursing is real and it’s up to us to ensure that Government responds to the needs of the people, not us having to bend to their whims.