Kerri Nuku: Nurses Organisation President on the lack of staff needed to meet the healthcare targets

The nurses union says there's not enough health staff to meet health targets.  

The Health Minister's laid out his plans for delivering health targets set in March.   

Dr Shane Reti's discussed increasing public hospital beds and operating theatres and using private hospital capacity more.  

He's confident the Budget and resources are already in place to deliver them.  

Nurses Organisation President Kerri Nuku told Ryan Bridge the whole workforce is understaffed and chronically underfunded.  

She says it's fine to have ambitious plans, but if there aren't the people or resources to implement them, it'll fail. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
We'll get our first glimpse of how the health sector
is performing and meeting the government's targets by Christmas. The
Health Minister, doctor Shane at Letti, released more detail on
them yesterday.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
These are ambitious targets and what I've said before is
that a number of these targets were hard for the
previous government. You know they're going to be hard for
me too.

Speaker 1 (00:17):
So currently Health New Zealand will have to find the
funding within baselines to do this, and there are some groups,
specialist groups who disagree. I think that that's wrong. Katie
Nookho is with us. She's the New Zeala Nurses Organization President. Carrie.
Good morning, good morning, thanks for being with us. What
is your issue with these targets and the way they're

(00:37):
going about doing them.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Well, it seems to be that it's fine to have
amvicious plans, but if you don't have the people and
the resources to implement it, then any good plan will fail.
And this is what it seems to be that we're
seeing here.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
Do how when you say we don't have the resources,
you're talking about.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Nurses, the whole of workforce. It's not just nurses that
have said that we're understaffed and the health system is
chronically underfunded. It is doctors, it is visios, that is
the rest of the health workforce.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
Is it not good to have a target just to have,
you know, as you say, have something to aspire to.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
And I think we agree with what the minister said.
He said that every dollar is spent on health is precious.
But the government health targets measures process, not outcomes, and
they're centered mainly around waiting this and access and flow
through the system. But if we fail to look at
the reasons for the blockages and the chokash points and

(01:37):
the delays within the systems now, which is workforce and resourcing,
then we're going to fail to execute any ambitious targets.
And that is the problem here. We've had a system
that's been chronically underfunded for years and chronically understaffed.

Speaker 1 (01:53):
Our nursing vacancy, though is down from twelve to fifteen
percent to six percent, is what the.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
Government is saying. That is not the reality of what
nurses are feeling on the work front and the patients engagements,
the higher work rates. That is not the picture that
our nurses in reality that are going to work.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
Every day face but surely the stats don't lie, do they.

Speaker 2 (02:20):
Well, nor do our nurses that are on the front
line and seeing these really high turnover of patients.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
Have we ever had a safe level of nurses in
New Zealand now?

Speaker 2 (02:29):
And that's part of the problem, right, We've never had
like internationally they're introducing what's called news to patient ratios.
We've never had that type of approach which will set
a standard around how many nurses per patients in the
work place do we need. That's the push, that's the
direction that our organization is saying for the government, let's

(02:50):
start to look at implementation around safe nurse to patient
ratio standards.

Speaker 1 (02:54):
All right, Kerrie, thank you very much for your time
this morning. Really appreciate That's Kerrie Niku, the Nurses Organism
Action A President. With us for more from News Talks
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