‘Walk a day in our shoes, minister’: Nurses prepare to strike

Thursday, 17 July 2025

Wairarapa nurses preparing to strike at the end of this month for safer staffing have issued the health minister a challenge.

Vijo George and Amy Tubman, Wairarapa delegates of the New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO), called on MP Simeon Brown to “come and walk a day in our shoes” to witness the impact of staffing shortages on patient care, ward safety and staff morale.

George and Tubman would join more than 36,000 Te Whatu Ora nurses, midwives, health care assistants and kaimahi hauora after a vote earlier this week in favour of industrial action.

The 24-hour strike starting at 9am on June 30 followed the failure of Health NZ to address safe staffing concerns during the collective agreement bargaining process, an NZNO spokesperson said.

George, who was a nurse on the medical surgical ward at Wairarapa Hospital, said “safe staffing is a big issue”.

Patients on his ward were “not coming in for fun”, he said.

“They are sick, they are in pain, and they need to be taken care of, and we cannot meet demand.”

Staff shortages meant he and his colleagues “cannot reach every corner”, and in a typical eight hour shift nurses may struggle to take even a short break.

An increase in the number of older patients presenting with more acute medical conditions contributed to the “high stress, high pressure” environment, he said.

In one instance, George was providing care to four older patients who needed constant supervision at the same time as “trying to organise new admissions to the ward, swapping patients around to make beds, covering meal breaks, responding to calls from A and E”.

“We are giving more than 100% and we are burned out and frustrated,” he said.

Tubman, who has 13 years of nursing experience, said while she’d welcome nurses’ pay keeping up with inflation, “pay is not the most important issue”.

Staffing levels were such that it was now “rare for a shift to pass without a colleague being in tears”, she said, and instead of starting a shift inquiring about a patient’s condition or progress, the usual question would be, “How many staff are we short today?”.

“We are fed up, worn out, tearful and sad,” she said.

Not only did the current situation increase the risk of mistakes on the ward, Tubman said it was prompting colleagues to leave for nursing jobs overseas and putting off potential graduates from entering the profession.

“We need to grow our workforce, but if nothing changes the workforce will deplete and no one will want to become a nurse,” she said. “Nursing will stop being seen as a profession and just become a job.”

Tubman and George acknowledged that some patients would have procedures cancelled because of the strike and understood their frustration.

“But we do not take action lightly,” Tubman said. “On other days we are having to cancel surgeries because we don’t have enough staff. We are at the end of our tether.”

Robyn Shearer, Health NZ’s acting chief executive, was “disappointed” by NZNO’s decision to strike.

“Health New Zealand is concerned about the … impact this would have on patients waiting for planned care and specialist appointments,” she said.

Shearer said “there is a reasonable offer from Health NZ still sitting on the table”, and that the action “would cause further disruption and delay to patients … and set back our work to provide … faster access to care”.

NZNO and Health New Zealand have said life preserving services would continue to be provided throughout the strike period.