The latest statistics confirm steady growth in the nursing workforce for the second year running – despite more nurses seeking work across the Tasman.
The recession has seen more nurses staying in the workforce and also more return to the fold but the statistics also confirm a rapidly ageing workforce that will impact when the recession ‘bubble’ bursts.
The Nursing Council last month released its 2010 annual report and its first workforce statistics profile in eight years.
The latest statistics show that after near stagnant growth in the middle of the decade, the active nursing workforce grew 3.1 per cent in 2009 and 2.5 per cent in the 2010 year.
Nursing Council chief executive Carolyn Reed said it appeared part of the growth was due to nurses coming back into the workforce, with anecdotal reports of more New Zealand-trained nurses on return-to-work competency programmes. She said there were also reports of more students coming through the nursing schools and more students applying to sit state finals this year.
But at the same time the number of nurses applying to the Council for verification of their registration so they can work overseas – the vast majority in Australia – was at the highest level for about five years. In the year to March 31, 2009, there were 2139 requests (1568 of those to work in Australia) and in the 2010 year there were 1956 requests, with 1525 of those for Australia.
It is not known how many of the nurses requesting verification end up emigrating but there are also growing anecdotal reports of nurses criss-crossing the Tasman for lucrative short-term locum contracts.
Meanwhile the workforce statistics profile confirms the rapid ageing of the nursing workforce.
The Medical Council was reported last month as expressing concerns about the ageing medical workforce, with more than half of New Zealand’s doctors now aged 45 or over and three per cent in their 70s.
The latest Nursing Council statistics show evidence of quite rapid ageing in the nursing workforce. In 1994, only 33.4 per cent were aged over 45; this rose to 47.5 per cent in 2002. During the same period the number of nurses aged over 60 jumped from less than three per cent in 1994 to 7.1 per cent in 2002 and now 11 per cent (with 3.5 per cent of those aged over 65).
In 2002 the average age of the New Zealand nurse was 44.6, by 2006 it was 45 and in 2009, 46.7 years old.
Reed said the ageing of the workforce was something it was keeping an eye on and believed it was partly due to the number of people entering nursing at a mature age. “But people coming into the workforce in their 40s still have 20 years of work and still contribute significantly,” though reports suggest that nursing schools were attracting younger cohorts.
She also noted the growing number of nurses over 60 and over 65. “I think that as a profession nursing does have to address how we can capitalise on the strengths of the older nurse and minimise the impacts on them of working longer.”
Another trend highlighted by the latest statistics is the growth in non-New Zealand registered nurses – from 14.7 per cent in 2002 to 24 per cent in 2010. And the average nurse now works 0.83 of a full-time equivalent (FTE) workload compared to 0.8 in 2006 and 0.76 in 2002.
