OPINION: Why are registered nurses who work outside of district health boards (DHBs) so undervalued?All registered nurses are highly trained and skilled professionals who ease pain and help save lives. Yet successive governments have enabled a growing pay disparity between nurses who care for people in public hospitals and those who care for people in aged-care facilities.Right now, that gap is sitting at about $5 an hour – that means aged-care nurses are earning about $10,000 a year less than their hospital counterparts, just because of where they are employed.How can that be justified? Aged-care nurses attend to some of our most frail and vulnerable people, often with chronic and acute health conditions ranging from kidney disease and congestive heart failure to failing and broken bones, mental instability and much, much more.read more
