Kerri Nuku: Nurses Organisation President on nurses being forced to work in "back office" roles, thousands of Kiwi nurses moving to work in Australia

Cuts in the health sectors "back office" roles are forcing front-line workers to pick up administrative work, resulting in delays for treatment and a reduction in services. 

Nurses and social worked are working as reception ships due to the staff shortages. 

In the year to June, 12,000 kiwi nurses gained registration across the ditch. 

Nurses Organisation President Kerri Nuku talks to Mike Hosking about the issue. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
If you want some numbers around the departure from our

(00:01):
shows to Australia, have a look at the nurses and
the year to June twelve thousand use the trans Tasman
pathway to gain registration across the ditch. That's almost a
fifty percent increase on the year before. Nurses Organization President
Kerrie Niokho's with us Kerry morning.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
To you, Good morning.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
This registration business is this you register and go or
your register in might go.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
You register and might go.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
So it doesn't mean you are going. So we haven't
actually lost that many. It's just we could lose that many.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
That's how many have expressed their interest exactly. But from
anecdotally what we're hearing a.

Speaker 1 (00:34):
Lot are going and do they go for lifestyle, do
they go for money, what do they go for?

Speaker 2 (00:40):
They go for better working conditions, they go for job opportunities.
You'll know that less than half of the nurses that
graduated this year got jobs, so a lot of them
are just going straight over to get jobs in Australia.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
If and this is not a new conversation, if we
could do something material about it, what would we do?

Speaker 2 (00:59):
Literally, Yeah, so we've got to get a workforce strategy
in place. First of all, we've got to introduce safe
staffing ratios. Secondly, and we've got to ensure that there's
budget to accommodate that. It's not that we are over
perhaps this over abundance of nursing workforce in the hospitals.
Already it's understaffed. So nurses are choosing to make the

(01:22):
decision to go somewhere where they've got introduced safe staffing
ratios in Australia, better working conditions.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
Better pay, right, so they can say pay a side,
but they can say, in terms of staffing ratio, have
a look at Australia, it's x to one whatever the
case may be. That's what we need here, and we
are short of that, and we can say that and improve that.
Is that correct?

Speaker 2 (01:42):
That's correct?

Speaker 1 (01:42):
Okay, So then once you fix that part, then it's
the money as well.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
Yeah, that's right. All that comes with working is it?

Speaker 1 (01:50):
Is it an ever? Is a vicious cycle? Or everything
I read is every public health system in the world,
basically in the Western world, the short of nurses.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
That's correct, absolutely correct. The problem that we've got here
is the introduction of a workforce strategy or a plan
last year from the government showed that actually this be
going to normalize this understaffing, which isn't based on the
changes in the conditions of patients or the acuity of patients.
And that's the problem. When you've got the budget driving

(02:21):
the incentivized how many nurses you put or how many
nurss you recruit. That's the wrong way around, especially when
we're supposed to be delivering a patient center delivery of
care and yet we're driving recruitments based on how much
budget we've got allocated.

Speaker 1 (02:36):
Does simm and Brown get that or is he just
of the I don't have any money, what do you
expect me to do? Mindset?

Speaker 2 (02:44):
Well, unfortunately we're hearing a lot of I don't have
any money and this is the budget, so work within
your means. That is the wrong way around for health
professionals to be working.

Speaker 1 (02:53):
But given we don't have any money, what are you
expecting them to do?

Speaker 2 (02:57):
There's got to be a reassignment of where the money
is invested. Certainly, privatization of care isn't the right way
when we want to increase access of services to patients. Certainly,
the currently what we're hearing and what we're seeing in
the news is that patients aren't getting the quality of care.
So we've got to change that around and pre op

(03:17):
prioritize what is important to New Zealanders. It's access to
timely appropriate care. That's got to be the priority. And
where our the money spent after that is something that's
left up to the minister.

Speaker 1 (03:30):
Kerry appreciate it. Kerri Nioko, who's the Nurses Organization president.
Mike just came out of Wakata Hospital after having an
OP may I say the care was first class, all star,
from cleanest to surgeons bent out of backwards to make
my stay excellent legal So it's not all bad news,
is it.

Speaker 2 (03:44):
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