{"id":27336,"date":"2025-09-17T07:39:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-17T07:39:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/27336\/"},"modified":"2025-09-17T07:39:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T07:39:10","slug":"nurses-turn-backs-on-health-minister","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/27336\/","title":{"rendered":"Nurses turn backs on Health Minister"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nurses turned their back on the Health Minister during his speech at the annual New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO) conference, coming in the wake of a report revealing hospitals nationwide were short close to 600 nurses per shift over the past year.<\/p>\n

The report, authored by Infometrics for the NZNO was based on Health NZ data from 1.69 million shifts in 59 public hospitals between 2022 and 2024.<\/p>\n

Understaffing was found to be most common in the Capital, Coast and Hutt Valley district, with 51% of shifts short-staffed between January 2022 and November 2024. Counties Manukau followed on 48%, while Taranaki was the lowest on 19%.<\/p>\n

Cancer, heart and trauma patients faced the most understaffed wards and emergency departments in the past three years. <\/p>\n

It comes in the wake of a report revealing hospitals nationwide were short close to 600 nurses per shift over the past year. (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n

The report came two weeks after 36,000 nurses, midwives and healthcare assistants walked off the job<\/a> over concerns about staffing levels, safety, and a pay offer described as “a massive backwards step”.<\/p>\n

Nurses on strike outside Health Minister Simeon Brown’s electorate office in Pakuranga were met by a sign on his windows<\/a> that said the union’s industrial action was disrupting more than 13,000 surgeries and appointments.<\/p>\n

Brown touched on the strike in his speech to the NZNO conference in Wellington today, telling a story of a premature newborn who was unable to have skin-to-skin contact with their mother due to the industrial action.<\/p>\n

“That is the real human cost of striking. We can’t afford a health system where patients are caught in the middle, we must and need to do better for patients.”<\/p>\n

\"Rangi<\/p>\n

Rangi Blackmoore-Tufi. (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n

This prompted one nurse to stand up, walk to the back of the room, and turn her back.<\/p>\n

“I just thought, ‘don’t come here and guilt trip me’,” Rangi Blackmoore-Tufi told 1News.<\/p>\n

“I’m not going to listen to this. You’re not listening to us. You’re not listening to the message that our strike is actually saying, so I’m just going to get up.” <\/p>\n

Blackmoore-Tufi was joined by other nurses at the back of the conference space.<\/p>\n

“When I first walked there, I thought, ‘I can do this’, and then I felt the warmth. I couldn’t see the numbers, but I felt like there was a collective there, and I felt like wasn’t the only one who thought the same thing.”<\/p>\n

\"Health<\/p>\n

Health Minister Simeon Brown. (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n

Responding to today’s protest and report, Brown said there were “tough conversations” to be had.<\/p>\n

“The reality is, they have been taking industrial action, I expressed my views in regard to the impact of strikes on patients. Thousands of patients have had care delayed, hips, knees, cataract operations delayed. And ultimately, that is a very real human cost, which I believe needed to be called out.”<\/p>\n

He said the report showed there had been a “significant hiring” of nurses in recent years.<\/p>\n

“Those numbers were a lot higher back in 2022. They have been reducing. That is a positive step forward, but it also highlights, and I agree, there is more work to do, and that’s why we’re focused on frontline services.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nurses turned their back on the Health Minister during his speech at the annual New Zealand Nurses Organisation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27337,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[134,111,43,139,69,135],"class_list":{"0":"post-27336","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz","13":"tag-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27336\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}