Source: Radio New Zealand
District nurses who have done the job for decades say understaffing is the worst it has ever been. File photo. 123rf.com
Waikato district nurses are at the end of their tether, as demand for their services soars.
District nurses – who provide care for patients in the community rather than in hospitals or clinics – say they are severely understaffed and it is causing burnout and stress, leading to widespread resignations.
They also say it is putting their safety at risk.
It comes as Worksafe considers a complaint from the NZ Nurses Organisation that Health New Zealand’s failure to improve district nurses’ working conditions was a breach of the Health and Safety Act.
Amy* is a district nurse from the Coromandel and says when she finally gets home after a shift she is so exhausted she can not do anything other than quickly eat dinner and then roll straight into bed.
She has done the job for several decades and said understaffing was the worst it had ever been.
She told Checkpoint she has to be on call, almost around the clock.
“If you go out at 11 at night, you might be out for two hours till one in the morning. You’ve then gotta unwind somehow because you’ve just been dealing with a palliative situation… possible end of life and then have to get yourself organised and come to work at eight in the morning.”
District nurses provide care to people in their communities. This includes care for wounds, IV management and palliative care.
It means nurses in rural areas often have to travel long distances multiple times.
Amy said that due to the staffing issues, they can be forced to choose which patients to see that day.
“It has been for too long, a very invisible service. And it’s only when the wheels start falling off and we start saying ‘no, I’m sorry, we can’t take patients, we actually can’t see them’, that it’s created a crisis. The risk is also that people are discharged without the support that they need. They have another crisis where they end up back in hospital very quickly.”
Amy said without district nursing, 30 percent of their patients would end up in hospital, which would come at a far higher cost to the taxpayer.
“There isn’t a team wrapped around them. Every time they’re at a patient’s house, there isn’t somebody to ring. There isn’t a doctor just down the hallway or whatever. So that decision making happens for those nurses every day individually in a person’s home when they’re right there.
“You can’t just go and get somebody else to just come and have a quick look… it’s not a thing, so responsibility is very high.”
Sarah*, another Coromandel district nurse, said many of her colleagues over the years had resigned because they could not cope with the physical and mental toll of the job.
“I know there are some people that are on anti-depressants, I personally am not at that stage yet, but then it takes a lot to stress me out.
“But when you’ve got a family, I’ve only got a husband at home, but there are staff members who’ve got families and young children.”
Sarah said district nurses can be sent to isolated areas where there was no phone signal so they were unable to call for help if it was needed.
“At the moment we do go out by ourselves, we also go out to houses we’ve never been to before and they could be out in the middle of nowhere.
“You don’t know what you’re going to find when you get to that house. Sometimes, it’s not a very nice environment and you really don’t want to be there, so sometimes we just turn around and drive off.
“But you don’t know that until you actually get to the house.”
The situation is similar in Hamilton.
The New Zealand Nurses Organisation said 34 full-time district nurses were needed across Waikato in 2024.
But NZNO Waikato organiser Nigel Dawson said demand for the service had nearly doubled since then.
“We need as soon as possible to re-do those calculations to look at what is required for safe staffing now.”
Dawson said district nurses in Hamilton are also often confronted with verbal and physical intimidation.
“A nurse had stopped at a traffic light and an offender jumped in with a machete, they didn’t actually take the car, but they forced her to drive around.
“She eventually managed to abandon the vehicle safely, but obviously with significant stress.”
In November last year, the NZ Nurses Organisation (NZNO) wrote to Health NZ Te Whatu Ora and said the understaffing of district nurses was putting their safety at risk.
Worksafe said it was considering the NZNO’s complaint.
Health New Zealand Waikato chief nursing officer Cheryl Atherfold said it was currently recruiting an extra 13 full-time district nurses.
It was also reviewing community models of care such as district nursing, while strengthening night-call processes.
Every Health NZ Waikato car has a distress alarm on each key ring, which staff can push if they felt unsafe while out in the community.
Heath NZ have started their 2026 patient safety calculations and District Nursing will be recalculated.
*Names have been changed to protect identities
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
