New Zealand has a widespread shortage of trained health professionals, now more so than ever. The COVID-19 pandemic has ensured that our already heavily taxed health system is under even more pressure; this pressure arises from situations such as trained staff or their family members falling ill with COVID-19 and needing to go into isolation, lower levels of nurses immigrating, higher levels of nurses migrating, an aging population of nurses reaching retirement, and nurses changing career.

Staff shortages are known to cause high levels of stress in workplaces, risking the long-term health and well-being of every employee and potentially putting patients at risk. Staff are at risk of burnout and patients suffer through long waiting times, causing too many to opt out of seeing a doctor when they really should.

Medical practices may also find themselves short handed in times of extra workload because of other factors, such as the setup of a new medical practice or new rooms in an existing practice. This is where additional trained staff can prove extremely beneficial, setting up the new practice spaces with the trained eye of an experienced nurse who understands how the space needs to function while allowing existing medical staff to continue to tend to patients.