Email from a NZ nurse talks to their daily working conditions

Recently we received an email from a nurse working in the NZ Health system under the Simeon Brown and Christopher Luxon regime.

The email did not make for pretty reading.

Here is some of that 1157-word email with any information about the sender stripped for privacy reasons.

Hey guys, 

I love your work. I’ve been following you for ages and I’m loving the coverage of the nursing strikes and stuff. As a nurse of 3 years I appreciate what you’re doing so much!  

There’s a few things I just want to purge from my soul about nursing at the moment, so I hope you don’t mind. People around me who are not in healthcare are getting sick of hearing about the state of things, telling me just to change my profession if I’m so unhappy. The thing is, like with any job, there are some parts of the job that I absolutely despise, but its the thankful patients, the grateful families, and seeing patients improve so much that they are discharged that keep me here, but it won’t be for much longer at this rate.  

The emailer then goes on to speak specifically to daily activities

We are struggling! We’ve had (I think) 6 nurses leave this year, they’ve hired 3 (only 1 new grad) but the funding for the others has been declined. We only have 5 nurses on our ward who have been nursing longer than 5 years, which means >75% of the nurses on my ward are juniors with less than 3 years experience in NZ. We do our absolute best for our patients, but the lack of experienced nurses is evident, which also means that the average nurse is absolutely not earning anywhere near the $125k mark that the government claim. I’d be surprised if our charge nurse earns more than that, and she’s been in the game a LONGGG time.

We are short staffed ALL THE DAMN TIME. I was injured on the job a couple of weeks ago on a nightshift, we were 2 nurses short, I had 11 patients!! All with quite high-level needs, multiple IV medications all due at the same times etc. A patient spilled something on the floor and failed to let anyone know. I went in to answer a call-bell & slipped over in it, spraining my wrist quite badly as I put my hand out, so I didn’t smash my head on the metal rail of the patient’s bed in the next space, and bruising my hip. Things could have been much worse if I’d hit my head, that’s for sure.  I went down to ED to make sure it wasn’t broken which thankfully it wasn’t, but I had to return to the ward to finish my shift in 7/10 pain. I couldn’t have adequate pain relief (only paracetamol & ibuprofen) because as per protocols, if I had any opioid analgesia I would have been deemed unfit to return to my patients, which was NOT an option. I couldn’t leave the other 2 nurses to finish my workload of medications; I still had to complete all my patient documentation and file an incident report for my fall so I could be covered by ACC, then hand-over all my patients to their morning nurses.  I’m still in pain, have weekly hand rehab, and I’m still very very angry. Management were aware of the short staffing before we even arrived for the shift, but they couldn’t do anything to help cover us despite wanting to.

Then, final thoughts

My point is we are seriously struggling. Not just as a profession, but as individuals too. I’m sick of this shitty government their elitist entitled bullshit!! I can’t understand how so many people buy into their lies and continue to support them despite being fucked over by them at the same time. I’m sick of being sworn at, spoken down to, having urinal bottles thrown at me, being punched in the face by dementia patients when we have to change their soiled pads (adult nappies). I even had one patient pull off their own stoma pouch full of faeces and attempt to throw it at me because I was unable to answer their call-bell “fast enough” because I had 4 other high needs patients to look after at the same time.  I’ve been threatened with violence, spat at, called names, all for what? A system that thinks I should be grateful for this treatment because I actually have a job when others don’t? Told that I knew what I signed up for when I became a nurse, it’s all part of the job and I’m just being selfish and greedy for wanting to be able to pay my bills and save for my future??

This government don’t give a flying fuck about us or the public. It’s getting to the point where chats around the break room are turning from any plans to move to Australia, to what professions we could or would like to do when we leave nursing.

I feel like I’m becoming a very bitter and cynical version of myself after only 3 years. Its sucking out my soul, destroying my empathy and breaking my capacity for resilience. I’m afraid of who I may become in another 3 years on the job.

Sorry for the rant, its been festering for a while. 

Keep up the great work team, and thanks for listening.

We get communications like this every week and we want to be a space where people can share their experiences, so, if you have a story to tell, and you want to remain anonymous then feel free to share your story at mail@blindfish.nz

Thanks to the nurse who wrote in needing a space to vent, thanks for the hard work you, and all those in the public health sector, do and be assured that we are with you wanting to get you better pay an conditions as a happy, healthy, well rested and remunerated nurse makes for a safer nurse in our system which is what we all want

Pat