A medical union says Canterbury DHB staff aren't the only ones being told that they can't work from home.
The Acute Services building at Christchurch Hospital. Photo: RNZ / Katie Todd
A Canterbury DHB staff email sent to RNZ said service managers were being told all staff rostered on needed to turn up at their workplace, not work from home.
The rationale - there was no Covid-19 cases in the South Island and vaccination was available.
Association of Salaried Medical Specialists executive director Sarah Dalton said it was not just Canterbury staff feeling anxious, as other DHBs were making similar demands.
The Canterbury DHB has since said the email was based on current advice that had been incorrectly interpreted and that had been corrected
But that directive was sent to staff in at least one Canterbury DHB department.
"It's really frustrating. I think some of them just also feel quite anxious about those kinds of instructions and it's really confusing when you're getting one message at the 1pm updates, another message from your employer, and the way the message is being phrased is not particularly kind."
Health workers in at least half a dozen other regions were facing similar issues, she said.
"It's happening in a number of hospitals around the country where, not only are staff being required to be present at work, but the tasks they're being required to do don't relate directly to acute services patient care, or basically they're being asked to do things that could be done at any time and aren't strictly part of their role.
"So we do think it's really important that there is clinically-led decision making through the lockdown rather than bureaucratic kind of command and control."
Twice a week, Dalton, the Ministry of Health, DHBs and other unions meet to iron out more consistent advice for DHBs and their staff.
"It's a real struggle, even once the advice is agreed and put out. We endlessly find examples where that national agreed advice isn't being adhered to either by the whole of a DHB or particular services in various DHBs, and I guess that's partly the nature of a system where you've got 20 different DHBs doing their thing.
"Maybe under Health NZ that's going to change. I don't know."
The Canterbury DHB's emergency coordination centre controller, Tracey Maisey, said all of the DHB's more than 11,000 workers had an important role to play as essential staff.
"There is no directive that all staff have to come to work. Some staff whose roles can effectively be carried out from home can, with their manager's permission, carry out their usual work remotely," Maisey said.
"The note to a small group of staff that you refer to incorrectly interpreted current advice and we have corrected this information."
Under alert level 4, she said some clinical staff were carrying out phone or video consultations but worked in the office so they had access to files and diagnostic information.
"It's important that clinical staff continue to turn up to work for their rostered shifts as we are still operating a busy acute hospital 24/7 and require staff to be at work," she said.
"Some clinical staff have been redeployed to help out at our vaccination clinics and Covid-19 testing centres and with contact tracing while their regular work is on hold.
"There is plenty of non-patient facing work for clinical staff to do such as updating guidelines, Covid-19 contingency and business continuity planning, signing off test results, case conferences etc."
The Ministry of Health said it had not issued any advice to DHBs about staff working from home.
"The DHBs are best placed to determine how they should continue to operate during the Covid response, while keeping their staff safe. The Ministry is not the employer and does not get involved with operational DHB issues - these are matters to be resolved by DHB management," the Ministry said.
"The Ministry understands that DHBs in different regions are making assessments about what work can be safely completed from home based on their operational requirements.
"DHBs deliver essential services and as such will continue to operate with the appropriate precautions in place during level 4."