New graduate nurses recruited into the New Zealand Defence Force will be for the first time working alongside "civilian" new grads in hospital wards.
Lieutenant Colonel Lee Turner, the defence force director of nursing, said the three nurses all successfully passed the officer selection board process but will spend their first year as officer cadets on NETP (nursing entry to practice) programmes working in public hospitals.
He said traditionally the defence force recruit nurses after at least two years clinical practice but the biggest barrier to recruiting was not clinical experience but nurses being able to pass the tough officer board selection process. The selection process involves five days of physical and mental aptitude testing and the success rate is only about 50 per cent.
So when it had three new graduates successfully meet the criteria it was decided to trial employing them and placing them within a hospital new graduate programme to build their clinical skills and to gain acute care nursing experience.
The three young women will be employed and paid for by the defence force but otherwise will be treated the same as other new graduates on the Capital and Coast and Hutt Valley district health board NETP programmes. Two will be based in emergency departments and the other will work in a post-anaesthetic care unit (PACU).
Turner said the three graduates will be additional and above the government-subsidised NETP places at the DHBs because the Defence Force is not funded by Vote Health and will be meeting the NETP costs itself. At the end of the NETP year the nurses will return to the defence force to start their military training.
