Gisborne Hospital emergency department nurses will strike on September 9 to protest understaffing. Gisborne Herald reporters Zoe Mills and Leonie Sheehan spoke to New Zealand Nurses Organisation delegates, who say they do not feel heard by senior health officials.
Last month, emergency department nurse and New Zealand Nurses Organisation delegate Clara Dolman-Tuhou worked over 94 hours in two weeks.
“I absolutely love my job, but loving the job does not make the current situation sustainable,” she said in a statement.
“The mental strain, exhaustion and anxiety that my colleagues and I are experiencing are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.”
Dolman-Tuhou is one of about 30 Gisborne Hospital emergency department (ED) nurses and supporters who will be striking from 2.30pm to 3.30pm on September 9, calling for safer staffing.
Speaking to the Gisborne Herald, Dolman-Tuhou said nurses were “exhausted”.
“We’re so understaffed right now ... the anxiety’s at an all-time high and the morale is low.”
Christine Warrander, another New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO) delegate and an acute care nurse, said nurses were regularly “in tears” during and after hard shifts.
“You can see on their faces as they’re coming in to do a shift, they’re just defeated ... they’re completely broken down.”
Both delegates described regularly skipping meal breaks on shift and working multiple 12-hour shifts a week to keep up with demand.
Hospitals across the country are straining under one of the worst influenza seasons yet and understaffing issues.
Last week, the NZ Herald reported that in 2025, almost a quarter of all nursing shifts were understaffed at some point.
Tairāwhiti fares better than the national average for nursing shift staff levels, with 9.5% of shifts below target staffing levels, 17.9% at target and 72.6% above target in 2025.
However, research released in July revealed that Gisborne Hospital had “marked inequities” compared with other hospitals in the country when it came to specialist dental care.
Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora confirmed it had been notified of the strike and the ED would remain open during the hour of the strike.
“Tairāwhiti is in an ongoing process looking at emergency department nursing staffing levels to ensure we have the right workforce capability, capacity and skill mix to deliver safe, high-quality patient care,” it said in a statement.
“This has been a collaborative process with the NZNO organiser and delegates. There have been several opportunities for feedback throughout and we remain committed to working in good faith as this process continues.”
While progress had been made lowering the hospital’s senior doctor vacancies, delegates said nurses were still under pressure.
Chief medical officer for Tairāwhiti Dr Nejat Zeynologlu said the vacancy rate of senior doctors was not reflected in the quality of care at Gisborne Hospital.
However, both NZNO delegates said they would not want their family members receiving care at the hospital at this point.
Neither delegate had met Zeynologlu in person and “hardly ever” worked alongside senior health officials.
“I don’t even know what [Zeynologlu] looks like,” Warrander said. “And that’s an issue. There’s people [at the] top level making decisions, but they’re not actually coming down and talking to the people on the ground level, finding out actually what the issues are and how it can be resolved.”
Zeynologlu declined to comment.
Minister of Health Simeon Brown was approached but declined to comment directly. In a statement, the minister said that the delegates were working through a ”genuinely hard winter” and the Gisborne workforce was “considerably larger than it was three years ago”.
“Gisborne is one of the best-performing districts in the country against the Shorter Stays in Emergency Departments health target. The district is admitting, discharging or transferring 91.3% of ED patients within six hours, against a national target of 95% by 2030,” the statement said.
It said Health NZ advised that two nurses in Gisborne had worked over 90 hours during a recent fortnight.
“Health New Zealand also advises that some nursing staff welcome the opportunity to pick up additional shifts and proactively offer to do so – this happens under every government.”
As delegates prepare to strike, Warrander said the concern of patients being affected by understaffing weighed heavily.
“If something doesn’t change, I think our fear in general in the nursing community is there’s going to be something happen to a patient.”
“It doesn’t matter how many times we can yell and scream and say it’s unsafe, [at the] end of the day it’s going to be pinned back on to the nurse, and that’s a scary aspect for all of us, and we don’t want that happening to a patient.”
