One hundred and twenty nurses have written to Health NZ chief executive Dale Bramley, saying the ED is in its own state of emergency.<\/p>\n
Health NZ had failed to plan properly for winter and had not hired the nurses it had agreed to, the letter said.<\/p>\n
North Shore ED charge nurse Jean Classey told RNZ the ED had been so busy it felt “feral”, with people unable to even fit in the waiting rooms.<\/p>\n
It was hard seeing people crammed into corridors, and brightly lit public spaces with no privacy.<\/p>\n
Sometimes incontinent people were waiting in wet beds until nurses could find a space to change them, she said<\/p>\n
“It’s an absolute nightmare. It feels like we’re at war,” she said.<\/p>\n
Classey, like all the nurses in this story, is a NZ Nurses Organisation delegate which gives them some protection for speaking out.<\/p>\n
The vast majority of nurses in the department signed the letter to Bramley.<\/p>\n
Health NZ said it had a winter plan running that was helping, but the emergency departments at North Shore and Waitakere Hospitals were having their busiest ever winter.<\/p>\n
Between them, there had been nearly 14,000 patients through the doors in July, it said.<\/p>\n
But the nurses’ letter said the crisis was “entirely predictable.”<\/p>\n
“Health New Zealand failed to adequately plan for winter demand, placing patients and staff at unnecessary risk,” it said.<\/p>\n
Some of the problems outlined included:<\/p>\n
– patients waiting 90 minutes to be triaged<\/p>\n
– heart scans that should be done immediately, taking hours<\/p>\n
– patients waiting more than 50 hours in the ED for a bed in the hospital<\/p>\n
– patients missing essential medications<\/p>\n
– patients left in soiled beds in overcrowded corridors<\/p>\n
– the department at 300 percent capacity at times.<\/p>\n
Health NZ had agreed to hire 25 nurses for the department but only nine had come, the nurses said.<\/p>\n
![\"Nurses](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/nurses-say-dignity-has-been-lost-for-patients-at-north-shore-XSQLZI2V3BEBFJWW6GAQKS7SYY.png\")
<\/p>\n
Nurses say dignity has been lost for patients at North Shore ED. (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n
Line of grey heads<\/p>\n
Nurses spoken to be RNZ said it was often impossible for people to get privacy in the ED when they were feeling at their worst.<\/p>\n
Sharon Franklin-Smith said she sometimes looked down to see a line of grey heads – people in their 80s or 90s – being cared for in the corridor.<\/p>\n
That meant a lack of dignity and respect.<\/p>\n
“That’s someone’s mother, grandmother and it breaks my heart, it absolutely breaks my heart.” she said.<\/p>\n
Jean Moor has been a nurse for 35 years and said it was the worst she had seen it.<\/p>\n
Nurses were juggling caring for their own patients, keeping an eye on those waiting, and trying to organise assessments and treatments.<\/p>\n
“You’re running, you’re constantly working really hard, your brain is in overdrive,” she said.<\/p>\n
Like many of the nurses she often got home hoping no one had died because they had not got the care they needed.<\/p>\n
Health NZ starts some hiring<\/p>\n
The day after it received the letter, Health NZ announced Friday it had started recruitment for 50 new nurses for North Shore and Waitakere Hospitals – both are operated by Health NZ’s Waitemat\u0101 district.<\/p>\n
Nine would be for the North Shore emergency department.<\/p>\n
Health NZ group director of operations Brad Healey said in a statement that Health NZ would also hire 10 nurses and 14 health care assistants that would be in a central team to be dispatched where needed in the hospitals.<\/p>\n
“The additional staff in the centralised nursing team gives us greater flexibility to respond to surges in demand and also cover unplanned leave,” he said.<\/p>\n
The organisation’s winter plan had helped care for more patients in the community and moved people quickly through the hospitals to free up space – but the demand this season had been much higher than previous years, he said.<\/p>\n
Healey said the hospitals has “amazing staff” and he hoped the recruitment would ease the load.<\/p>\n
Chief executive Dale Bramley said last week seriously ill people should always still go to an emergency department where they will get priority care.<\/p>\n
But the North Shore ED nurses said nine new nurses announced Friday was not enough.<\/p>\n
Health NZ had earlier agreed to 25 but had so far only hired nine, as part of a recruitment go-slow, they said.<\/p>\n
The department now needed even more to cope with the numbers through the doors, the nurses said.<\/p>\n
Health NZ did not respond to RNZ’s request about the letters detailed claims about care in the department.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Patients are waiting in soiled beds at North Shore Hospital’s emergency department and nurses say conditions are so…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":578433,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[51,42,134,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-578432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-auckland","tag-headlines","tag-health","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578432","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=578432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578432\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/578433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=578432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=578432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=578432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}