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A senior nurse with 38 years of experience serving the NHS in Britain and three District Health Boards here in New Zealand has had enough.
Amanda Homewood, 55, will hang up her stethoscope the day after she and her colleagues staged a nationwide strike demanding more wages and better working conditions after rejecting the latest offer from district health boards.
Whether or not the nurses’ union is successful in its negotiations with district health boards will not affect the future of Homewoods. But she said it was the same poor conditions that drove nurses on the streets that caused her to quit the profession.
Tomorrow is my last day of work as a registered nurse. I choose not to re-register … after 38 years.
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Homewood worked as a clinical nurse specialist for the elderly in Masterton for the Wairarapa DHB, but said the situation in other health boards was no different.
While I still enjoy interacting with patients and my clinical work very much, I am totally exhausted by the system. The constant pressure was under, the staffing levels, the increased expectation in us to perform nursing and non-nursing duties.
PIERS FULLER / Stuff
Masterton nurse Amanda Homewood, right, is leaving the profession tomorrow saying she is totally exhausted. She was at the NZNO union strike at Wairarapa Hospital on Te Ore Ore Rd in Masterton on Wednesday.
She said conditions and pay needed to be improved.
No leave coverage means you come back to a mountain of work, changes in your work situation that are not properly managed … I am an extremely experienced registered nurse, I have a masters degree and I earn less than the people sitting behind a desk pressing a few keys.
Homewood emigrated from the UK 16 years ago and worked for its National Health Service (NHS) before coming to New Zealand.
She has worked in three district health boards since then.
The problems are the same wherever you go. This is a real critique of the system and of the fact that nurses have historically been extremely undervalued.
She said her inscription had become like a pair of handcuffs and many nurses felt unsafe.
Every day nurses return home anxious to be in trouble for things that are beyond their control.
Authorities should understand why nurses are on strike.
This is about the future of healthcare in New Zealand because I honestly couldn’t promote nursing as a good career choice to anyone close to my heart.
We need to encourage qualified people in the profession, and you only do it with a decent salary and good conditions.
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