A nurse at Wait\u0101kere Hospital says he is walking off the job today because staff can not give vulnerable stroke and older patients the care they deserve overnight.<\/p>\n
About 60 nurses and healthcare assistants working on the specialist Muriwai Ward will strike for two hours this morning between 8am and 10am.<\/p>\n
New Zealand Nurses organisation delegate Neil Warrington – who has worked at the ward for 23 years – says staff are asking Health New Zealand for one more night-shift nurse to keep patients safe.<\/p>\n
Staff were currently rushed and stressed, he said, and some patients with extensive health care needs weren’t getting the care they needed.<\/p>\n
“Some of our patients need a lot of care even at night. Our patients, many of them are fully dependent, some of them actually have to be moved with a hoist.<\/p>\n
“So they need help with toileting overnight, continence overnight, prevention of falls overnight… some of our patients need monitoring overnight, we are an integrated stroke unit as well, some of our patients require very frequent observations day and night.”<\/p>\n
Warrington said the members had been raising concerns for months that short staffing was putting patients at risk and striking was a last resort.<\/p>\n
“We shouldn’t have to go to these lengths for one more nurse in a desperate attempt to give our patients the care they need.”<\/p>\n
He said under-staffing meant patients might be left unattended and risked falling and getting injured, something which had occurred in July.<\/p>\n
Warringston said Health NZ had reduced the number of beds in the ward by five, but there had been no confirmation this would be permanent.<\/p>\n
In a statement, Health New Zealand group director of operations for Waitemat\u0101 Brad Healey said measures would be put in place on Monday morning to keep essential services going.<\/p>\n
He said Health New Zealand had taken a number of steps in response to concerns, including conducting a review and recruiting more staff.<\/p>\n
“Since May, two additional healthcare assistants have joined Muriwai Ward, 18 additional resource nurses have been recruited across Waitemat\u0101 to help cover unplanned leave, and Muriwai has been prioritised for vacancy cover where available.”<\/p>\n
He said five patients had transferred from Muriwai Ward to the new Karekare Ward as a way to manage capacity across the hospital.<\/p>\n
Healey rejected that patient care had been affected on the ward.<\/p>\n
“There has been no impact on the quality or safety of care provided to patients, and we remain focused on ensuring patients receive timely, high-quality care in the most appropriate clinical environment.<\/p>\n
“Health NZ remains committed to shaping a more clinically informed and sustainable approach to nursing workforce planning so we can better deliver safe, high-quality care for patients, wh\u0101nau and communities.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A nurse at Wait\u0101kere Hospital says he is walking off the job today because staff can not give…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":606506,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[134,527,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-606505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606505","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=606505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606505\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/606506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}