Health NZ hires thousands more nurses and hundreds more doctors, but pace of hiring slows

Health Minister Simeon Brown. Photo / Mark Mitchell WGP 11Mar25 - Health Minister Simeon Brown

Health New Zealand-Te Whatu Ora added 2,100 nurses and more than 600 doctors to its ranks between September 2023 and March 2025, according to new figures published by the agency on Friday.

The most recent health workforce data showed that as of March 2025, there were 35,341 nurses, 5188 resident medical officers (RMO), and 6419 senior medical officers (SMO) – both categories of doctors. Not all of these people were working fulltime.

Health Minister Simeon Brown celebrated the increase from September in a statement, saying that “more doctors and more nurses means more access to healthcare for patients and will support the Government’s focus of reducing wait times for patients and delivering on our health targets”.

“As Minister of Health, my priority is ensuring that all New Zealanders have access to timely, quality healthcare,” he said.

However, despite the workforce continuing to increase, the pace of hiring has slowed – in some cases drastically.

The pace of hiring has slowed in some areas. Health NZ added 1883 net new nurses between September 2023 and March 2024, but added just 278 between March 2024 and March 2025.

A similar trend could be seen in the hiring of registered medical officers, with 350 added between September 2023 and March 2024 and 131 added between March 2024 and March 2025.

Hiring of senior doctors has accelerated with an increase of 65 senior medical officers between September 2023 and March 2024, but 103 added between March 2024 and March 2025.

Labour’s health spokeswoman Ayesha Verrall said that if you compare the March quarters of the last three years, hiring is much slower now than in the past.

The number of nurses increased 10% in the year to March 2024, which included part of Verrall’s time as Health Minister. The same period to March 2025 saw the nursing workforce increase 1%.

The change was less pronounced among doctors, which increased their workforce size by a similar amount in both periods.

Verrall said the figures actually showed “the work Labour put in to increase the frontline health workforce and help with shortages, particularly in nursing”.

“This Government came in, put a hiring freeze on the front line, and now wants to be congratulated for minuscule staffing increases.

“If Simeon Brown was serious about making a difference in health, he’d have continued that work to fill health workforce gaps and support frontline health services,” Verrall said.

There are signs the hiring is not enough.

The day the figures were released, the New Zealand Nurses Organisation members voted to go on strike for 24 hours, with one of the union’s concerns being safe staffing levels at hospitals, which has been dropped from the most recent offer to the union.