Health NZ says it will hire 380 extra nurses, midwives and health care assistants as part of its annual review of staffing.

That was just over 1% of the total Health NZ nursing workforce.

Chief nurse Nadine Gray said it would put the staff in the districts where they were most needed after a difficult winter.

She told a news conference in Auckland on Friday the "majority" were nurses, but did not know the exact percentage.

Each year Health NZ used a calculation known as Care Capacity Demand Management (CCDM) to estimate how many staff it needed annually, and the 380 came from that, she said.

The full-time equivalent (FTE) roles will be spread across the regions as follows:

  • 120 FTE in the Northern region
  • 32 FTE in the Midland region
  • 76 FTE in the Central region
  • 149 FTE in the South Island

The organisation has also announced it would look into changing the way it makes that CCDM calculation, with patient to staff ratios to be used instead.

A business case into the change was expected to be completed in 2027.

The staffing announcement comes amidst warnings the health system is falling into a deeper crisis, with emergency departments and wards bursting at the seams.

Health New Zealand has hired just 54 additional full-time equivalent nurses in the past two years.

Gray said the new hires would be in addition to nurse hires already announced, such as a boost of nine for North Shore's emergency department.

"There's nothing more important than delivering high quality care to people that enter our services each and every day and so it will go some way to help ease some of those pressures that we've been experiencing across New Zealand.

"Our focus remains on having the right number of staff, with the right skills, in the right place to deliver safe, high-quality patient care."

Of the new staff, 94 would be in emergency departments, which continued to experience high demand.

"This builds on significant recruitment already underway across the health system. Workforce planning is an ongoing process. We continuously monitor demand, service pressure, and staffing requirements, and adjust workforce plans to respond to changing needs across the country," Gray said.

Earlier this year, it was revealed there had been a go-slow on hiring, but Gray said recruitment for the 380 roles would begin straight away.

PSA national secretary Fleur Fitzsimons said the new hires would not be a meaningful solution to chronic underfunding across Aotearoa's public healthcare system.

"Although health workers will welcome any new hires into their massively overstretched teams, 380 nurses nationwide is a drop in the bucket when it comes to current vacancies," she said.

"We know, for example, that there are around 70 vacancies just in the Counties Manakau district in South Auckland. There are 35 vacancies at the secure unit of Mason Clinic, also in Auckland.”

The PSA and other health unions have been ringing alarm bells about widespread vacancies causing stress, burnout and a poorer level of care for years now, she said.