More than 90 per cent of new nurses are successfully completing Nursing Entry to Practice (NETP) programmes, according to the Clinical Training Agency.
The trends for the first three years of the programme are included in the agency’s just released report on how it intends to spend its $125 million budget in 2010.
The creation of the new CTA board has created some uncertainty over the agency’s future role and the report notes that the new board will influence the agency’s future priorities and work plans with details still to be finalised. But it does report setting up an “innovations fund” using the estimated $4 million “underspend” by providers unable to fill all training places in the 2009-2010 year.
Meanwhile, the overall CTA nursing training budget has risen from $16.6 million in 2007 to $18.8 million of the agency’s total $125 million budget.
The number of nursing trainees funded by CTA has also grown and is expected to top 3000 in 2010. The bulk of those will be nurses funded via district health boards to pursue approved postgraduate programmes with the remaining trainees – an estimated 900 in 2010 – being on NETP programmes.
The scheme began at district health boards in 2006 with nearly 94 per cent successfully completing the programmes designed to improve nurse retention and recruitment.
The number of programmes where trainees found the teaching “not directly applicable to the clinical setting” is reported to have decreased substantially from 14.3 per cent in 2007 to 3.8 per cent to date in 2008.
The issue of theoretical workload had fluctuated but was still viewed as a problem by 38.5 per cent of programmes in mid-2008.
A review of the Nurse Entry to Practice (NETP) programmes is scheduled for next year with revised specifications and costings to be in place for the 2011 year.
Nursing Council audits of NETP programmes found all boards were meeting standards and an evaluation report on the impact of the programmes was due in December.
