Specialist doctors may also be taking industrial action in the next couple of months

Thousands of nurses will be on strike today, asking for better pay and conditions.

The Association of Salaried Medical Specialists says it fully supports the nurses.

Executive director, Sarah Dalton, says there's a staffing crisis across the healthcare sector and it's time to stop ignoring the toll it's taking on the workforce and services.

She says the association's negotiating its own collective agreement with DHBs but if there's no progress, it will begin stopwork meetings in August.