Compers tool marginalises senior nurses.

By the time this Letter is published, the voting for senior nurses' pay will have been settled and as per NZNO industrial adviser Glenda Alexander's prediction (Kai Tiaki Nursing New Zealand, November 2005, p7), it will probably have been endorsed. (For voting figures, see p27 of this issue.)

The question to be asked is whether it was endorsed because people actually agreed with the settlement or because they were worn down by the thought of another protracted bun fight between NZNO and district health board (DHB) chief executives. Let's face it, with Christmas around the corner, most of us would have been keen to get a few extra dollars in our pockets. At Auckland DHB, clinically-based nurses have been grouped predominantly into grades 3 and 4, while those nurses with managerial positions are grouped into grades 6 and 7.

I congratulate the latter group who are clearly being recognised for their true worth, but am utterly astounded at how clinically-based nurses, whose impact on patients and junior nurses is so undervalued, have been treated. Ironically the editorial and primary focus of the November issue of Kai Tiaki Nursing New Zealand was education and yet nurse educators were the group most obviously marginalised in the latest pay offer.

The fundamental issue is not the process that has taken place but the tool used to determine what is a fair wage for a particular senior nursing group. The Campers tool is clearly weighted in favour of managers and leaves clinically-based nurses with little hope of showing their worth, as their skills, competencies and knowledge are not even measured by this tool.

When the senior nurses at Auckland DHB were first scoped in 2002/2003 using the Campers tool, the major criticism was that it did not measure the quality and attributes that senior clinical nurses bring to their roles. We were promised this would be addressed during the scoping exercise in 2005, ie the toot would be modified to include criteria that acknowledged clinical input.

Clearly this has not happened and if this tool is now considered the bench-marking document for future pay negotiations, then senior clinical nurses will never achieve the respect they deserve.

Michael Geraghty, nurse specialist,

Adult Emergency Department,

Auckland City Hospital.

NZNO industrial adviser Glenda Alexander replies: The fundamental issue in the job scoping exercise is not to do with the process or the tool. It is all about the inadequacies of the way in which the job is described, ie the job or position description. The Campers tool was adapted for each of the regional scoping processes where it was used, and again for this national exercise, in order to pick up on the factors relating to nursing or health positions. The "requests for review" for a number of jobs arises where the job descriptions were deficient in describing (using the Compers factors as the framework) what exactly the positions' requirements and outcomes were/are. By running the jobs back through the system with more detailed job descriptions, this should identify whether the position has been evaluated correctly and/or whether the translation of that outcome to the salary scale has been appropriate. (More information about the review process is on p27.)