Te Whatu Ora’s Health Workforce Plan released today shows our health system is focused is on capping costs not meeting patients’ needs, New Zealand Nurses Organisation Tōpūtanga Tapuhi Kaitiaki o Aotearoa (NZNO) says.

NZNO Kaiwhakahaere Kerri Nuku says the plan normalises ongoing understaffing across all settings in the health system.

"It is entirely drawn from operating within a constrained funding environment and repeatedly cites workforce planning around ‘living within our means’ and ‘ensuring more sustainable workforce translates to a more financially sustainable system’."

One of the priorities is getting ‘workforce basics right’ by improving national workforce planning including by reviewing current and future supply models.

"NZNO calls on Te Whatu Ora to utilise safe staffing ratio tools for this work to ensure patient needs are met with sufficient nurse-to-patient numbers. This will also require the current pause in the FTE calculations for the Critical Care Demand Management programme - which Te Whatu Ora nurses are currently striking over - to be lifted," Kerri Nuku says.

Another priority in the plan is to "training more health workers locally" so they "reflect the diversity of our own communities".

"Unfortunately, this rings hollow given Te Whatu Ora’s failure to support new graduate nurses into employment and a lack of support for training more Māori and Pacific nurses to achieve population parity.

"Māori nurses are 7.5% of the nursing workforce but Māori are 20% of the population. Te Whatu Ora needs to properly invest in Māori-focused programmes, continue to fund effective initiatives to increase recruitment and retention of the Māori workforce and grow mātauranga Māori specialists," Kerri Nuku says.