Nursing agreement 'must be honoured’

Press, 17 November 1976, Page 18

Nursing agreement 'must be honoured’

The North Canterbury Hospital Board had no option but to honour an agreement made with the Canterbury branch of the Public Service Association on the staffing of the new psychiatric unit at the Princess Margaret Hospital. This recommendation was made at a meeting of the board’s institutions committee on Monday. All hospital board members, except one, were present to discuss the psychiatric unit. The recommendation will go to the board meeting on November 24.

Details of the type of nursing rosters within the unit are not included, as they are still being negotiated. The nurses had objected to a directive from the Health Department which prevents the hospital board from reaching an agreement over the staffing of the new psychiatric unit at Princess Margaret. The directive says that the psychiatric nurses’ pay margins over general nurses does not apply at Princess Margaret. The agreement the board had reached with the P.S.A. was that registered psychiatric nurses recruited from the unit at Princess Margaret would be attached to Sunnyside Hospital and seconded to Princess Margaret, that measures would be incorporated to protect the status and conditions of senior staff with long experience in the unit, and that a joint working party would be set up to work out the details of this agreement. The institutions committee

said that its recommendation had been taken in view of the fact that the board had acted properly and in good faith in seeking Health Department advice on the unit and acting on that advice, even though it was subsequently shown to be wrong. The decision had also been taken on the interpretation of an answer from the Minister of Health (Mr Gill) to a question from a P.S.A. representative on a staff interview with Mr Gill at Sunnyside Hospital on September 14: on the falling morale of the present staff at the psychiatric unit at Princess Margaret: and the declining numbers of staff and inability to replace them, and as a result, increasing difficulty in caring for the patients. These comments and the recommendation were contained in a draft letter by the chief executive (Mr J. G. Laurenson) which the committee approved and recommended should be sent to the Director-General of Health (Dr H. J. H. Hiddlestone) and to the Canterbury branch of the P.S.A. The letter says the board must make a decision to protect the interests of its patients in the psychiatric unit, and possibly in Sunnyside Hospital and elsewhere, if the present djspute spreads into a major confrontation. At a meeting of Health Department officers and members of the hospital board on Thursday, Dr Hiddlestone said that he was sympathetic to the board, which was not to blame for the position it found itself in. But the agreement was not legal.

Dr Hiddlestone confirmed that wrong advice had been given to the board about the unit, and that the board had acted properly and responsibly in seeking that advice and taking it.

Dr Hiddlestone felt that representatives of the Health Department and P.S.A. shouid meet, and he said a letter had been sent to the P.S.A. offering this. The chairman of the Sunnyside sub-group of the Public Service Association (Mr G. Nimmo) said that it was encouraging that the board had agreed to honour the agreement, and it was the job of the nurses now to support the board. The nurses had no complaint against the hospital board, he said.