Nurses are questioning the number of people who voted yes to the latest offer.

﻿The heat is oppressive and she works with Aussie's hardened-crims but this week's nurses pay boost is unlikely to lure Maddy Matthews home.

Further district health board nursing strikes were avoided on Tuesday when the New Zealand Nurses' Organisation (NZNO) confirmed a "majority" of nurses voted in favour of a deal with health boards.

Part of that agreement was pay increases and an immediate $38 million for roughly 500 more nurses. There was also a working group being set up to look at staffing with the potential for further increases.

SUPPLIED Kiwi nurse Maddy Matthews would love to return from Australia but says the pay in New Zealand doesn't compare.

Bringing nurses back to New Zealand was one idea health boards spokesman Jim Green suggested to boost staffing numbers, alongside getting those who had left the profession to return, getting more new-graduates, and getting others from elsewhere in healthcare.

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Aged Care Association chief executive Simon Wallace said that sector was already losing staff and more would likely go across to health boards after this week's news.

JASON DORDAY/STUFF Further nurses strikes, such as this in July, were avoided this week.

Matthews, speaking from 30degC heat in Queensland, Australia, said she had thought of returning home to work as a nurse in New Zealand - till she received an email from a friend in a New Zealand hospital.

That email said her friend, who Matthews had gone to nursing school with, had taken home a $1300 pay packet that fortnight working in an emergency department.

Matthews, who works as a clinical nurse in a maximum security prison, regularly earn $4000 to $5000 a fortnight.

Only about $100 of that was because of where she worked and extra responsibilities she took on.

For Matthews, originally from Nelson, Tuesday's deal between the NZNO and health boards is nowhere near enough to bring her home.

Friends and family might lure her home but, unless she saves a lot, she won't be able to buy a house.

CAMERON BURNELL/STUFF DHB spokesperson Jim Green says getting nurses to return to New Zealand is one option to boost staffing.

A New Zealand bank manager she talked to said even if she saved $100,000 - a 20 per cent deposit on a $500,000 house - she was unlikely to get a mortgage as her nursing wages would be too low.

But an aged care registered nurse told Stuff she would now start applying for jobs at a district health board.

The nurse, who didn't want to be named or identify her employer, said on top of improved pay at health boards, the conditions were better.

There was better career progression and far-superior staff-to-patient ratios at health boards, she said.

"I have about 30 patients on a shift. It is quite physically-demanding not being able to get breaks at proper times, not enough breaks ... frankly, at the end of the day, it is quite emotionally-draining."



