Nurse shortages continue to hinder the Southern District Health Board’s efforts to achieve safe staffing requirements, despite its plans to do so being audited and approved. Like most health boards, the SDHB was struggling to recruit nurses and remained dozens of full-time equivalents behind what it needed, Ms Wilson said. CCDM, also known as safe staffing, is a set of tools and processes for DHBs to match their capacity to care with demand from patients. However, Ms Wilson said that having successfully drafted the complicated staffing rosters needed to achieve safe staffing did not mean that all the nurses who should be on the wards were actually on the SDHB’s books. Only about 20 new FTE had already started, which reflected the challenges of finding staff, Ms Wilson said.

Source: Otago Daily Times December 08, 2021 18:45 UTC