Staffing Implications

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31657, 18 April 1968, Page 1

Staffing Implications

(N.Z. Press Association) WELLINGTON, April 17. The Minister of Health (Mr McKay) does not intend to make any direct comment at present on the threat to work to rule by nurses at Kingseat Psychiatric Hospital. In an interview today, Mr McKay said that he had already received several verbal reports on the staffing shortage at the hospital. “This whole question has implications for the over-all structure of nursing staff in mental hospitals. “The situation was discussed by the Government in February,” he said, "but has been deferred because the Public Service Association is bringing a case on conditions of employment to the tribunal on May 21. “I wouldn’t like to comment directly on the situation

at Kingseat at this stage,” said Mr McKay. More than 200 male and female nurses at Kingseat Hospital yesterday endorsed a move to work to rule from April 25 if the Health Department refuses to provide more domestic staff. The nurses say they cannot give patients proper care when they have to spend hours stoking the boiler, scrubbing and polishing floors and cleaning windows. The Minister said today: “I am not quite clear on what is involved in this work to rule. “Many of the conditions at Kingseat apply in other hospitals and I am trying to look at the whole picture—and not just a part of it.” Towards the end of last year the Government approved the addition of 227 mental hospital staff, 65 of whom were domestics, he said. “The additional 65 staff re-

presented at that stage an increase of 84 per cent in the domestic establishment.” Mr McKay said that he was pushing for 93 more staff for the Mental Health Division of the Department of Health. Between 1956 and this year, staff in the Mental Health Division had increased from 2081 to 4000. On the other hand, the number of patients being treated had increased only slightly—from 9643 in 1956 to 10,414 in 1967-68. “This is an increase of only 8 per cent,” said Mr McKay.