Planning is underway across the Canterbury health system to limit disruption of next month’s strike.

The New Zealand Nurses Organisation issued notice to the country’s district health boards two weeks ago, after its members voted in favour of the 8 hour strike on 9 June.

NZNO Industrial Advisor David Wait said members were angry and frustrated at the first DHB offer received last month.

“That would have given most members little more than 1.38 percent, just under the rate of inflation. This is despite the incredible sacrifices they made in 2020 to keep the country safe from COVID-19.”

Acting Chief Executive for Canterbury and West Coast DHBs, Becky Hickmott said the number one consideration was patient safety, and acknowledged that NZNO also supported patient safety by providing Life Preserving Services (LPS) during the strike.

“Urgent and emergency care will remain available throughout the period of the planned strike. This includes the Emergency Department, acute surgery, all intensive care units, cancer care and the Renal Dialysis unit.”

 “111 calls will be responded to as usual and people should access urgent and emergency care as they normally would, but expect things to be busy.”

“There are close to 5000 nurses, midwives and healthcare assistants at Canterbury and West Coast DHBs who may strike, so the strikes are expected to cause significant disruption to non-urgent services in both regions.”

 “We are putting a number of measures in place to ensure we can continue to provide urgent and emergency care during the strikes. Our contingency plans are about rescheduling what isn’t urgent and reducing the demand on the staff who will be working on this day.”

 “Urgent procedures and surgery such as cancer surgery will be prioritised during the planned strike period on a case-by-case basis.”

 Useful numbers for contacting the appropriate service on the West Coast can be found here:

https://www.wcdhb.health.nz/your-health/find-and-enrol-at-a-health-center/

 Switchboard numbers for individual Canterbury Hospital sites can be found here:

http://www.cdhb.health.nz/Hospitals-Services/hospitals/Pages/default.aspx