The Ongoing Struggle to Achieve Workforce Flexibility in Nursing
Recently the College of Nurses and primary health care nurse leaders in NZNO sent the follwing letter to Cathy O’ Malley as Deputy Director General of Health. The subsequent teleconference was not especially helpful but Cathy O’ Malley has promised a letter providing specific feedback on the list of issues raised. The letter will be useful as it will require the Ministry to gain its own clarity on these sometimes“ murky” issues. In addition it will provide nursing with a letter which can be widely distributed and used to challenge some of the many misunderstandings and misinterpretations that plague the full utilisation of nursing in primary health care employment settings. As you will see the letter was sent 3 months ago and despite a reminder 3 weeks ago we are still awaiting a response. Clearly providing the answers is proving challenging!
Copy of the letter sent-
Cathy O’ Malley Deputy Director-General Sector Capability and Innovation Ministry of Health PO Box 5013 WELLINGTON
April 30 2013
Dear Cathy
Re: Forthcoming meeting( May 8 th) to discuss nursing engagement with primary health care developments.
We would like to raise with you our long standing frustrations on a range of issues preventing nurse practitioners and registered nurses from fully delivering their potential in primary health care settings and especially in General Practice.
We apologise for the length and complexity of this letter but the issues are in themselves complex and long standing. It seemed useful to provide you with this background ahead of the meeting.
We are disappointed by the continued failure of the Ministry of Health to include nursing in ongoing discussions regarding primary health care and the all important discussons on the version 18 PHO contract. We appreciate that these discussions are high level but fail to understand why General Practitioners are strongly engaged yet nurses are not. It seems to us
8