Christchurch Hospital is short 120 nurses, according to an internal system that is meant to gauge how many people are needed for safe staffing levels.
The Care Capacity Demand Management system, known as CCDM, is filled in by nurses at the end of a shift to show what staffing was needed to provide safe care. It is intended to help with short and long-term staff planning.
Data seen by RNZ showed Christchurch Hospital had 120 fewer nurses than recommended by the CCDM system, based on information gathered last year.
The data showed the emergency department was short 25 full-time equivalents, and the neurology and neurosurgery ward were 11 full-time equivalents short.
New Zealand Nurses’ Organisation delegate Courtney Milne said demand on staff had not dropped since the data was collected.
“If anything the demand would be increasing. People are coming into hospital sicker due to the ongoing health care crisis of people just not getting timely care,” she said.
Health New Zealand (HNZ) said the CCDM system to guide staffing numbers had been paused because it was being used inconsistently, with 18 different DHB areas calculating FTEs in different ways.
Milne said nurses were frustrated that they were still required to enter the data, but it was not being used to determine long-term staff numbers.
“It is absolutely demoralising for the staff, because we are working hard to enter in the data to capture our time to be reflected in the care that we need to provide, and try and future proof [staffing] and ensure we get enough nurses to meet the demand,” she said.
Nurses were doing their best to ensure patients received the best care, but there could still be delays, Milne said.
“We can manage a shift if we are short for that shift, but it is just the ongoing shortness that means people are just getting absolutely worn down. People are coming to work anxious. They are stressed. They don’t know if they are going to have enough nurses to provide the care that patients are entitled to, and should be receiving,” she said.
HNZ chief nursing officer Nadine Gray said while she could not comment on the Christchurch situation in isolation, it was committed to safe staffing levels.
She said the CCDM informed day-to-day staffing requirements across health campuses but HNZ, in agreement with unions, decided that quality improvement work needed to be done around how FTEs were calculated.
“Our hospitals are using the new HNZ CCDM full-time equivalent (FTE) Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) to calculate FTE requirements for the year ahead, ensuring that staffing levels meet patient care demands,” she said.
“To align with the new SOP calculation methodology, we are currently working to complete all of the calculations for the 25/26 year, which will provide updated FTE numbers.”
Gray could not say if nurses had been overestimating the number of staff required in the CCDM data.
“I think what we may see is in some areas we may require less resources and in some areas we may require more,” she said.
“They work in a very busy environment, where demands are high, they are very dedicated, and we as an organisation can’t thank them enough for the care they provide every day.”
She said the new methodology would ensure they had the right staff-to-patient ratio, while May’s budget would give health chiefs better oversight of FTEs nationwide.
rnz.co.nz
