‘Nursing costs may lead to lower standards’

Press, 29 January 1986, Page 8

‘Nursing costs may lead to lower standards’

PA Auckland The Minister of Health, Dr Bassett, says he is worried that hospital standards may drop after the wage settlement for nurses.

Dr Bassett said there were already signs that hospital boards wanted nurses with lower levels of education because they were paid less.

“Because nurses are now expensive, a lot of boards are wondering whether they cannot train more enrolled nurses for one year Instead of for a three-year course at a technical institute,” he said.

“That is not something one wants to be encouraged, but it is an inevitable outcome of high wage settlements,” he said. Dr Bassett said it would be a pity if using lowerpaid nurses became a trend. While the financial brakes had been put on

health in the last seven years, nursing had gone through a revolution, he said. In 1974 only 30 per cent of the nurses in public hospitals were fully trained; now 72 per cent were fully qualified. "We have now reached the stage where the availability of funds and the march to professionalism are now about to come to a crunch point,” he said. The Canterbury Hospital Board’s chairman, Mr Tom Grigg, said that the board had taken on more enrolled nurses to do some of the tasks previously performed by student nurses. With the shortage of registered nurses, the board had to consider different ways of meeting nursing needs, he said. Accordingly the board was using enrolled nurses to do duties not requiring a fully trained nurse. The increased intake of

enrolled nurses was not related to the increased cost of registered nursing staff.

The board’s primary concern was to provide the best service, for the people in Canterbury and that meant providing the right standard of trained person to perform the service, he said. The chairman of the Auckland Hospital Board, Dr Frank Rutter, said it was too early to tell whether the trend to use lower-paid nurses would develop in Auckland. It was happening to some extent already because of the shortage of nurses, particularly at Middlemore Hospital, he said. He said that the trend was undesirable because it diluted the experience in the nursing workforce. But it was sometimes necessary, he said, if the board failed to fill' all nursing vacancies.