The four registered nurses (RNs) were among thousands of Te Whatu Ora nurses who last month took part in a two-week partial strike of refusing to plug staffing gaps outside their normal workplace or shifts.
And if they had to take that action again, they would.
Karen McFarlane
Charge nurse coordinator
The great thing about not being redeployed is that I’m not having to ask staff to redeploy, so therefore stress levels from a charge nurse coordinator’s point of view are reduced already.
But we’ve got things done like, extra training, we’ve got bereavement call follow-ups and bereavement data all gathered with not being redeployed.
We’re on top of the quality stuff.
So, staff are getting to do the things that should be important to our job, but often get sidelined when we’re redeployed. Better interactions with families, nurses have had the time to stand and talk with the patients and explain what’s going on, give that extra support to relatives. It’s really been noticeable.
Peter Groom
Nurse unit manager
Redeployment. Source of misery. So, without it, staff are happier, healthier, sicknesses is down, and we’re getting all the work done that is our work. Whether it be an audit, whether it be a policy review, whether it be an appraisal, the stuff that we do need to do, but we don’t get done when the staff are being redeployed. It was a very pleasant week. The learning is that variance response team (VRT) can be staffed.
Manorma Prakash
Nurse educator
I’ve been able to catch up with the audits, look at some of the moving and handling steps, which I do as an educator for ICU, which was great. I’ve been able to go through some of my e-learnings and things like that, which sometimes I don’t get the time to do.
Nimya Jacob
Nurse educator
I’ve been able to catch up with our e-learnings and get more time to engage with patients. We would like to be stay in our unit definitely.