Anne Daniels, President
NZNO Tōpūtanga Tapuhi Kaitiaki o Aotearoa

The “personal is political”.

Most understand this saying to mean that our personal experiences are founded in our political circumstances and inequality. An example of gender-based inequality is violence which currently affects one in three women in their lifetime. Violence and aggression are defined as “physical assault, verbal abuse, threats and aggressive behaviours”.

New Zealand research is consistent that violence and aggression towards nurses and other health care worker is common. A 2011 workplace violence report identified that the health sector had the highest rate of assaults and violence. As most nurses, midwives, health care assistants and kaiawhina are women, it is clearly a gender inequality issue, and it is very personal too.

Everyone who goes to work has the basic human right to return home healthy and safe. Laws exist to protect individuals and communities from harm by other individuals, organisations, employers and governments. To accept otherwise is to accept intolerable injustice. But it is very much accepted by the very institutions we depend on to keep us safe.

Nurse shortages were predicted, and avoidable but successive governments did nothing. The shortage now affects those nurses at work and at home when violence occurs.

Nurse shortages have created tensions between those who are there to care and those who wait far too long for that care, whose anger and frustration often morphs into violence and abuse. Recent media has commented on the increase in police call outs to emergency departments at times that correlate to patient wait times.

Depression, post-traumatic stress disorders, hypertension, dissatisfaction and high rates of attrition are the outcomes of violence and abuse that have been accepted for far too long and normalised by nurse employers and governments.

The risk of normalisation at work and within society is that it not only hides the true extent of the problem but also serves to excuse, and by default, validate the behaviours that lead to unsafe work environments. These attitudes seem abhorrent but are very real.

Recently, Te Whatu Ora took NZNO to court when Gisborne nurses fought for the right to strike. Te Whatu Ora challenged safety concerns by saying the workplace was safe. This was rejected by the Judge who said Te Whatu Ora’s case was “weak at best” and there was clear evidence that the workplace was indeed unsafe. Why did Te Whatu Ora believe it was ok to suggest an unsafe work environment was safe in a court of law? Where does that attitude come from? Why is it accepted?

Last week the Otago Daily Times reported that a nurse had been severely assaulted by a patient. The nurse took the patient to court and the judge decided the patient’s behaviour was excusable and further that they needed their mana and dignity upheld. The patient was given a suspended sentence. For the nurse, nothing.

In the context of the “It’s not OK’ campaign that states clearly that no violence is excusable or the law which makes hurting someone a criminal act, where health legislation requires everyone to manage and eliminate risk, how was this ok? What message does it send to the perpetrator of violence and to nurse employers? That nurse shortages are okay? That violence towards nurses, who are mostly women, is okay?

Individuals will not take action if they feel the wider social environment doesn’t support the view that violence is not okay. So, we must act to change attitudes and outcomes for ourselves.

Our CE Paul Goulter recently said: “We cannot improve conditions for our nurses unless we take on the current health system. That’s why we must be political.” It is up to every NZNO member, everywhere, to make it so.

Maranga Mai!