Rob Campbell: Former Health NZ Chair on the report revealing the nursing shortage at hospitals

New data shows hospitals were, on average, 587 nurses short every shift last year. 

A Nurses Organisation Infometrics report analysed Te Whatu Ora data from 1.69 million shifts from 2022 to 2024 in 59 public hospitals. 

Last year saw a slight improvement on 2023, when the shortage averaged 684 nurses per shift. 

Former Health New Zealand Chair Rob Campbell told Mike Hosking it confirms that issues facing the health system are dire. 

He says nurses have had to face people telling them they're wrong about the issues, but now it's clear they aren't. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
And seemingly never ending battle over healthcare in this country.
Later stat show on average we were five hundred and
eighty seven nurses per shift short last year. This is
some inframetrics work done for the Nurses Council. Now. Rob
Campbell is of course the former Health New Zealand chair
and he's back with us.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Rob.

Speaker 1 (00:14):
Morning to you, Mike.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
See you can do a lot with numbers this morning.

Speaker 1 (00:18):
Yeah, you can do a lot with numbers country one
point sixty nine million shifts. So what does that mean?
I mean, being five hundred and eighty seven short on
average out of one point sixty nine million shifts between
twenty two and twenty four. Is that a disaster? Is
it a bit short?

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Is it? What is it? It's more than a bit short.
It's probably on its own short of a disaster. But
it's just something that we've known. Everyone working in or
around the health system has known that a lot of
shifts were short staffed for nursing staff and other staff.
So it's proving something we knew and they're only having
to prove it because the management and politicians have been

(00:54):
denying something that we all knew was true.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
So it went from six point eighty four on average
down to five eight seven. So is this the changes
announced and more nurses being employed. Is that slowly but
surely improving the scenario.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
I think it's been in blocks, Mike. There have been
some pretty big recruitment campaigns. There's also obviously some leakage
to Australia and out to the private sector, but there's
been I think a minor improvement. But the problem is
that the demand side is also increasing, so this is

(01:27):
a difficult issue for everyone involved. To me, the issue
here is we know this's a big issue for everyone involved.
We know that staffing is a problem. We've got to
be able to deal with it openly and honestly. And
I think the thing that disturbs me is not such
the numbers, because they were really known. What disturbs me
is that Health New Zealand ministers and the ministry we're
all trying to deny that this was happening when we

(01:49):
all knew it was true. It doesn't help.

Speaker 1 (01:51):
Is it a dispute over numbers? In other words, they're saying, no,
these numbers are wrong and we're not short. Or is
it simply about money? Yes, we can employ hundreds more,
but we don't have the money to do it.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
Well, I think they obfuscate. At the end of the day,
these numbers within some range of being accurate at this time,
because of course they look back historically. So there is
a problem. The first thing you've got to do is
to admit there's a problem and then sit down and
work out what the solutions are. At the moment, what
the nurses and others have had to face is people

(02:20):
saying there's not a problem, you're wrong and they knew
they went wrong, and now everybody knows they went wrong.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
The other part of the question, even if we did
have the money, is there is there the supply there
or do we have to tap the international market or
if we tap the international market to exhaustion.

Speaker 2 (02:34):
I think we know we haven't tapped it to exhaustion.
But it's also not a long run answer. That you
need to be able to plan these kinds of workforce things,
and so we do need more training of these sorts
of skills, and we need to be able to offer
secure employment to those people. So it's a long term issue.
This is not something that's going to go away by

(02:56):
employing a few hundred more nurses in one block. It's
an ongoing issue that we've got to address openly.

Speaker 1 (03:01):
Good insight. Rob appreciate it. Rob Campbell, who is the
former chair of Health New Zealand.

Speaker 2 (03:07):
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