October 2017 December 2013 | Page 11

Te Puawai

HWNZ hosts workforce strategy day in
partnership with NNO.
The recent day (November 29th) hosted by Health Workforce NZ (HWNZ) was a tremendous
opportunity to see and understand the breadth of work currently being achieved by the combined
efforts of NZ Nurse leaders. The national nurse group (known as NNO) is a forum where leaders
of 9 national nursing organisations come together to find convergence of perspectives and to
clarify points of divergence so as to work together effectively on agreed key Nursing and health
service issues.

The NNO:





does not constitute another nursing
organisation
does not speak as a collective voice for
nursing
and
there
is
no
NNO
spokesperson – members comment to
media
in
accordance
with
own
organisational policy understanding that
where consensus has been reached at
NNO on an issue, individual organisational
comment will express that consensus.
is not a decision making group

It is however excellent evidence of the
enormous collegiality, collaboration and
commitment to the greater good between all
of the major national nursing organisations.
Alongside the long overdue expansion in the
size and capacity of the nursing team in the
Chief Nurse’s office in the Ministry of Health
we are seeing a really strong focus and
combined expertise being brought to bear on
strategic challenges and direction for nursing.
A major issue for the health sector at the
moment is the ongoing development of a
workforce that is flexible, responsive and able
to respond to the escalating demand for
services. For this reason it is critical that there
be a respectful and active partnership
between NNO and HWNZ.
The health system is facing challenges
through a growing gap in demand for services
© Te Puawai

and supply of workforce. This has been
stated so often now that it risks losing impact
but is nevertheless an important signal to all of
us that workforce planning is extremely
important.
Nursing leaders have led
considerable development of data intelligence
around new graduates, workforce planning,
advanced practice development, and care
capacity demand management in hospitals.
Nurse leaders also hold to the strategic vision
for the all-important goal of closely aligning
nursing services with community need.
Nursing, being a large, generalist and flexible
workforce is well placed to meet the changes
required but data indicates that this workforce
is not growing at the pace required to meet
the demand. Attention to the development of
the nursing workforce is essential if we are to
see both clinical and financial stability in the
New Zealand health system.
Nursing has previously argued that to date
HWNZ has paid insufficient attention to
nursing as the largest regulated workforce,
which also directly supervises the largest
unregulated workforce. At the end of last year
the College along with NZNO and the College
of Midwives wrote to HWNZ expressing our
concern about the progress HWNZ was
making in developing and implementing a
workforce strategy. In that letter we noted that:

College of Nurses Aotearoa (NZ) Inc
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