Photo: RNZ Pacific / Sela Jane Hopgood
A Gisborne nurse has described winning a hearing against Te Whatu Ora as a small victory ahead of their planned strike this afternoon.
The hospital's nurses from its acute ward were due to walk off the job at 1.30pm, for an hour after the Employment Court threw out a bid by the health agency to stop the protest.
Te Whatu Ora applied for an interim injunction on the grounds it believed the threshold for the strike was not justifiable because of progress and processes underway to address the health and safety concerns.
Ward 5 New Zealand Nurses Organisation delegate Christine Warrander has given an assurance their patients will still be attended to while the ward's nurses are demonstrating.
"There will be other staff from other areas looking after the patients on the wards so they're not going to be not looked after," she said.
"We'll be walking out of the hospital and walking across the road and picketing there for an hour and returning to work at 2.30."
Warrander said the legal win was huge for nurses.
"We feel like it's very big for us; we have not been listened to up till now and we feel like this is a small victory in our favour and it also leaves it open to other hospitals and wards that are also struggling with short staff. They can now do stuff under health and safety where before we haven't been able to," Warrander said.
The nurses have been calling for the number of beds in ward 5 to be reduced from 25 to 20 to help reduce workloads.
She also described the fatigue many nurses were continually facing in the ward.
"Every shift you're showing up and you don't have the staff to look after the patients. You're often two or three nurses down on a shift and so you're having a huge workload.
"You're not getting to your patients on time, medications are getting delayed, treatments are getting delayed. We're working through our breaks, we're staying late, coming in physically, emotionally and mentally exhausted and just have to turn around and repeat the process on your next shift," Warrander said.
She said Te Whatu Ora's loss at court showed change needed to happen for both patient and nurses' safety.
"We're not going to roll over anymore, we're done. We need to be listened to and something needs to change for patients' safety."
After the judge's ruling, Te Whatu Ora said it accepted that staff were under pressure - but was sticking to its argument that the strike would make things worse.
In a statement, its chief executive Fepulea'i Margie Apa said the hospital had two priorities - firstly, ensuring patients had the care they needed and secondly, working with the union to address the pressure on the hospital and its staff.