North Shore Hospital emergency nurses have secured a victory - and are set to get the staff they have been asking for since before their "nightmare" winter.

Health NZ has promised to employ 24 new nurses - one shy of the number the ED nurses said they were promised months ago.

The nurses spoke out in August about how they were struggling in an emergency department that sometimes had triple the number of patients it was staffed to deal with.

They called it a state of emergency, saying patients were being left in soiled beds and they were worried they could not care for them safely.

Shortly after, Health NZ started to recruit for nine nurses, and on Tuesday said it was hiring another 15.

ED nurse and Nurses' Organisation delegate Jean Classey said she and her colleagues were "elated".

"I don't think we would have achieved this if we hadn't stood up and spoken out. They would have left us languishing - so for us it is an absolutely amazing victory."

The extra staff would make a huge difference for patients, she said.

It would mean more nurses to care for them in every part of the emergency department and it would be harder to miss anyone deteriorating fast, she said.

North Shore Hospital's boss Brad Healey said it was "wonderful" to be able to fully recruit for the ED.

"They've been under enormous pressure. Much more pressure than we expected when we were doing our winter planning. The volumes coming through has been very challenging," he said.

In a letter to the nurses seen by RNZ, Healey thanked them for advocating for their community.

"We recognise that staff have repeatedly raised concerns regarding workload, patient safety, overcrowding, and the ability to consistently deliver the standard of care that both patients and clinicians expect.

"Your concerns have been heard and taken seriously."

Recruitment had already begun and he did not expect any delay, he said.

Waitakere Hospital, which had also been under massive pressure this winter, was to get a total of 15 nurses, some of who were already being recruited.

Healey said lessons would be learned from this winter when work began to prepare for the next one.

"With hindsight, I think we would all say it would have been better to have had additional resource in place but we just didn't know."

Classey said there was still huge work to do to try to stop patients being cared for in corridors, or to stop patients being stalled in ED waiting for a hospital bed.

She hoped other nurses around the country would be encouraged by their victory to keep fighting for what they needed.

"Because we know across New Zealand there are shortages in every other bit of healthcare," she said.

The new nurses would be part of the 380 announced last week nationwide, after Health NZ released its annual calculation of staff needed.

That comes after the organisation's two year hiring go-slow to try to save money.

The North Shore nurses had initially asked for a total of 25 nurses for the department but a slight change in the way staff were catergorised meant that was now 24, Classey said.