{"id":18621,"date":"2026-09-30T05:54:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-29T16:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=18621"},"modified":"2026-09-30T05:54:00","modified_gmt":"2026-09-29T16:54:00","slug":"health-nz-agrees-to-24-new-nurses-for-north-shore-hospital-after-nightmare-winter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=18621","title":{"rendered":"Health NZ agrees to 24 new nurses for North Shore Hospital after ‘nightmare’ winter"},"content":{"rendered":"
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North Shore Hospital emergency nurses have secured a victory – and are set to get the staff they have been asking for<\/a> since before their “nightmare” winter<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Health NZ has promised to employ 24 new nurses – one shy of the number the ED nurses said they were promised months ago.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The nurses spoke out in August about how they were struggling in an emergency department that sometimes had triple the number of patients it was staffed to deal with.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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They called it a state of emergency, saying patients were being left in soiled beds and they were worried they could not care for them safely.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Shortly after, Health NZ started to recruit for nine nurses, and on Tuesday said it was hiring another 15.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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ED nurse and Nurses’ Organisation delegate Jean Classey said she and her colleagues were “elated”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“I don’t think we would have achieved this if we hadn’t stood up and spoken out. They would have left us languishing – so for us it is an absolutely amazing victory.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The extra staff would make a huge difference for patients, she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It would mean more nurses to care for them in every part of the emergency department and it would be harder to miss anyone deteriorating fast, she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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North Shore Hospital’s boss Brad Healey said it was “wonderful” to be able to fully recruit for the ED.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“They’ve been under enormous pressure. Much more pressure than we expected when we were doing our winter planning. The volumes coming through has been very challenging,” he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In a letter to the nurses seen by RNZ, he thanked them for advocating for their community.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“We recognise that staff have repeatedly raised concerns regarding workload, patient safety, overcrowding, and the ability to consistently deliver the standard of care that both patients and clinicians expect,” he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“Your concerns have been heard and taken seriously.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Recruitment had already begun and he did not expect any delay, he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Waitakere Hospital, which had also been under massive pressure this winter<\/a>, was to get a total of 15 nurses, some of who were already being recruited.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Healey said lessons would be learned from this winter when work began to prepare for the next one.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“With hindsight, I think we would all say it would have been better to have had additional resource in place but we just didn’t know.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Classey said there was still huge work to do to try to stop patients being cared for in corridors, or to stop patients being stalled in ED waiting for a hospital bed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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She hoped other nurses around the country would be encouraged by their victory to keep fighting for what they needed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“Because we know across New Zealand there are shortages in every other bit of healthcare,” she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The new nurses would be part of the 380 announced last week nationwide, after Health NZ released its annual calculation of staff needed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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That comes after the organisation’s two year hiring go-slow<\/a> to try to save money.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The North Shore nurses had initially asked for a total of 25 nurses for the department but a slight change in the way staff were catergorised meant that was now 24, Classey said.<\/p>\n

rnz<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

North Shore Hospital emergency nurses have secured a victory – and are set to get the staff they have been asking for since before their “nightmare” winter. Health NZ has promised to employ 24 new nurses – one shy of the number the ED nurses said they were promised months ago. The nurses spoke out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":18622,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18621"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18623,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18621\/revisions\/18623"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}