Hospital staff are owed money dating back to 2010. Photo / 123rf
Hospital staff are owed money dating back to 2010. Photo / 123rf
Could hiring freezes in hospitals across the Tasman be the answer to our workforce shortage?
Late last month, Australian media reported several Victorian hospitals announced temporary freezes as they grappled with budget pressures.
New Zealand Health Minister Shane Reti hoped we could take advantage and attract someworkers here.
“I think particularly those New Zealand graduates who may have made their way to Australia, how we figure out how we might be able to entice them back is interesting to me.
“We are aware of their challenges and I’ve given some encouragement to our team to see how we might bring back some of the skills.”
But there were concerns it might not be so straightforward.
Association of Salaried Medical Specialists executive director Sarah Dalton said we should be doing everything we can to bring people back and to bring people into New Zealand.
“But our work will be cut out bringing people back from Australia - their terms and conditions are far above anything we offer.”
Labour’s Health spokeswoman Ayesha Verrall said the country was not in a position to capitalise on any opportunities in the global market at the moment.
“There is a hiring freeze on back office staff, and the Government denies there’s a hiring freeze on clinical staff and yet I receive endless correspondence from nurses, from medical specialists, saying they cannot fill vacancies.
“So I believe the settings are highly restrictive and we’re not in a position to take advantage of more workers - workers that we desperately need.”
The Nurses Organisation said it would welcome any changes that would bring New Zealand domestic nurses home.
Chief executive Paul Goulter said if we could put together a package that could get them back, that was a good idea and they would look forward to working with the minister on it.
One of the things that had led to the nursing crisis was New Zealand had been unable to provide good jobs.
“That’s not just money, but also the conditions and respect for their professionalism. We consistently over the years, haven’t been able to do that, there’s been a lot of noise about it but the lived reality of nurses is that’s not the case.
“So part of the promise in bringing them back to this country has to be giving them good jobs - and it’s in that area I think we need to do some serious work with the minister and Health NZ.
This comes ahead of a new workforce plan for the health sector, which Reti said would be released in the next month or so.
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti. Photo / Michael Cunningham
He said they wanted to ys they want to focus on retention of workers already here, our domestic pipeline and our international pipeline, which Reti said was wider than just Australia.
“Wherever we have willing and able [people with] skills that we need, who might want to come and live and work in New Zealand, that’s where we’ll reach, too.”
There was a range of jobs that needed filling - including maternity, mental health and critical care nurses as well as junior doctors, specialists, and allied health workers, he said.
Goulter said they had been consulted on plan - and for them there was a dominant theme.
“First of all we’ve got to attract more nurses into education and training, we have to keep them in education and training, and then we have to give them good jobs afterwards.”
He said it was simple, but successive Governments had failed to do it - and we needed to have another crack at getting it right this time.
Dalton said they had some limited engagement on the plan, and were hoping there would be something for senior doctors this time.
“We have been given a clear message that our hopes need to be limited, that there are budget constraints in what is likely to be in that plan.
“I think we need a complete step change and a completely different approach to how we staff our health system.
“Stop pretending it’s a cost and remember it’s a massive and crucial investment - there are so many services that are currently close to collapse, we can’t afford to pretend that healthcare is a budget line business, it’s not, it’s a public good and we need to properly invest in it.”
Verrall said it was important the Government continued to publish an annual workforce plan, andimportant it included estimates of current number and current gaps, and projected gaps.
“Unless we have that information we can’t plan our workforce for the future.”
Danica MacLean is an Auckland-based news director and senior reporter for Newstalk ZB, with a focus on health stories. She joined NZME in 2017, initially working for the Northern Advocate before switching to radio. She has previously worked for Stuff in Northland.
