Worn down by anguish
My daughter has been a nurse in New Zealand since 2009 and there is more to the dispute over pay than meets the eye. There are three issues but only one – the pay dispute - has been partially addressed by the Government.
Extreme staff shortages have
not been meaningfully addressed for years by either National or Labour. Patients waiting up to 31 hours before being treated (NZ Herald, August 3) is exacerbated by an ageing nursing force not being replaced by new recruits. Without sufficient qualified staff, patients' lives are compromised and backlogs cannot be eliminated.
The mental health of children, farmers, single mothers, golf and tennis stars, and Olympic athletes are exhaustively considered, but imagine the anguish of a nurse, after stressful shifts day after day, having to walk past 40 seriously ill patients waiting for 30 hours in the emergency department or, worse, in the passage. All the nurse can do is walk past to a patient lucky enough to be in a ward. This must be most demoralising to a person trained to help but powerless because there are not enough nurses and doctors. This stress also results in many nurses leaving the profession early.
Johan Slabbert, Warkworth.
Petty and mean
The nurses' vote to reject the district health boards' (DHBs) offer and to strike for a day is, in essence, a resounding vote of no confidence in their employers. It is, most of all, an attempt to force DHBs to ensure safe staffing of hospitals and health services, despite long-standing and successful attempts by DHB management to avoid this.
As such, the DHB legal action against the nurses in order to ensure safe staffing during the strike is both hypocritical and hostile.
Hypocritical because nurses have historically ensured safe staffing in previous stop works and this strike is to try to hold DHBs to honestly guarantee safe staffing in the future.
Hostile because this action is unnecessary, given this matter could be resolved by negotiation. It is a distraction and it is not difficult to guess why the DHBs would pursue court action.
Interestingly, the DHBs point to any number of reasons why their services are short-staffed. Absent among these reasons are their own recruitment and retention policies (or the lack of them); their treatment of their staff; and general pettiness and meanness of spirit.
Chris Cottingham, Te Henga.
Just action, please
Chester Borrows, lawyer, former National Party MP, and policeman talks a lot of sense (NZ Herald, August 4) based on his experience and research rather than on party affiliation.
The recent report produced by the Government's Safe and Effective Justice Advisory Group on which he worked gives the Government plenty of ideas for improving society.
The Labour Government has had ample time for inquiries and it is time for positive, effective action.
Bob van Ruyssevelt, Glendene.
Not carried away
The vast majority of Auckland commuters are poorly served by current services and will gain no benefit from a $10-$15 billion investment in a single route for light rail; described even by former Labour finance minister and AT board member Michael Cullen as an "enormous cost" for "an idea whose time has passed" (NZ Herald, August 2).
Those of us who do live adjacent to Dominion Rd already enjoy a high-frequency bus service, with bus lanes throughout and new routes allowing a 15-minute trip from Mt Roskill to the CBD. Even if an upgrade was free, most of us would much prefer the status quo to years of "enormous disruption", just to gain an incremental improvement.
While the Minister of Transport notes that buses "cannot compete with the capacity" of light rail, capacity was doubled when air-conditioned double-decker buses were introduced to Dominion Rd just four years ago. With international student numbers past their peak, and trends towards telecommuting and flexible working hours, it is hard to imagine capacity will be a major issue in the next 30 years. It is even harder to imagine that light rail will be the technology of choice in 2051.
Stephen Bayldon, Mt Roskill.
