Brown told the audience at Te Papa in Wellington today that strike action by nurses was hurting patients.
He said the government valued the work of nurses and urged the union to put patients first.
The conference was being held a fortnight after 36,000 nurses, midwives and health care assistants walked off the job for two days demanding better pay and increased staffing.
Striking nurses outside Brown's electorate office on September 2, the first day of the strike, were met by a sign plastered across his windows which said the union's strike was disrupting more than 13,000 surgeries and appointments.
The strikes follow nearly a year of deadlocked negotiations between the union and Health New Zealand/Te Whatu Ora, which culminated in a 24-hour strike at the end of July.
A new report by Infometrics for the nurses' union found hospitals were short an average of 587 nurses every shift last year.
The report, released today, titled 'How many more nurses does New Zealand need?', was based on Health NZ data from 1.69 million shifts between 2022 and 2024 in 59 public hospitals.
NZNO chief executive Paul Goulter said the findings put paid to Te Whatu Ora's claims that hospitals were not short-staffed.
