WORKFORCE/FIONA CASSIE
The Minister of Health has expanded a bonding scheme – one of his major health workforce initiatives – with no idea where last year’s “bonded” nurses are actually working.
In fact, no one knows how many of the 683 nurses who signed up to the “high trust low bureaucracy” scheme are working in the targeted hard-to-staff specialties.
Directors of nursing spoken to by Nursing Review said they had not been consulted about the “vague”, “not well understood” scheme which had had no noticeable impact.
Minister of Health Tony Ryall in announcing the scheme’s expansion said demand last year had “far exceeded expectations”. But he could not provide data to Nursing Review on whether that demand had led to more nurses working in the hard-to-staff areas the scheme targets.
The aim of the voluntary scheme is to attract graduate nurses, doctors and midwives into hard-to-staff specialties and communities. But beyond requiring graduates to sign up by expressing an interest, the Ministry of Health does not ask graduates to report when or whether they get a job in their chosen specialty.
The first performance measure of the scheme will be in mid-2012 when the first nurses are due to voluntarily report to the ministry with proof of completing three years service. Signed-up nurses who can prove they committed to the “hard-to-staff” areas of theatre, ICU and cardiothoracic nursing get $8500 cut off their student loan after three years or $14,165 after five years.
Ryall declined to answer questions from Nursing Review on why he had expanded the scheme to cover surgical nursing without any data on what impact the first bonding round had had on hard-to-staff specialties.
He also declined to comment on why there were no performance measures on the scheme’s goal of encouraging more graduates to work in hard-to-staff specialties.
But in a short statement he said “the fact that there’s a lot of interest indicates its value”. “We’re also getting very positive feedback from young nurses we meet who are on the scheme.”
Susanne Trim, New Zealand Nurses Organisation professional services manager said bonding could be a very positive move but there appeared to be “a real gap in the ministry’s data and evaluation of the programme”.
A Nurse Executives (NENZ) spokeswoman, Jocelyn Peach, said directors of nursing had not been engaged in the scheme’s process and it was not well understood. She said at her own board, Waitemata, it only discovered in passing that two of its theatre nurses had signed on.
Nursing Review reported last year that Auckland’s directors of nursing had not noticed any upsurge in interest for jobs in the targeted specialties as a result of the scheme. Leanne Samuel, regional nursing officer for the Otago and Southland district health boards, said there had been no noticeable change in interest in her part of the country either.
The Ministry of Health was unable to provide any data on nurses on the scheme beyond what it supplied last year – that of the 683 confirmed applicants for the scheme, 238 were already working in the specialties and 445 were intending to.
It said in a statement that the scheme was specifically designed to be “high trust and low bureaucracy” and an initial evaluation would be undertaken after the first payment cycle in 2012. It also added the ministry was not able to provide information to boards on registrants and it was up to graduates to inform boards if they wished.
