A financial stick will be used from next year if district health boards don’t provide guaranteed new graduate nursing jobs, says Health Workforce New Zealand chair Des Gorman.
He said boards are being told to shape-up this year or funding could be reduced in 2014 and withdrawn totally in 2014.
Gorman first mooted extending the medical model of ring-fenced internships to nursing in late 2010, when low turnover and tight budgets saw new graduate unemployment starting to loom large as an issue. Chief Nurse Jane O’Malley took up the call in 2011, concerned that the vacancy-driven model could see job-hunting new graduates lost to the profession. But to date, few district health boards have made the shift to ring-fencing 12-month positions dedicated for new graduate nurses only.
Gorman said HWNZ was now sending a message to district health boards that it was serious about introducing ring-fenced ‘internships’ for nursing graduates.
“Sometimes you need some sort of lever to make people respond to something that’s utterly sensible, and the lever we have is that we fund them.” In particular, HWNZ funds the new regional training hubs set up to support health professional postgraduate training and channel HWNZ training funds for that region’s DHBs.
“What we have told them (DHB chief executives) is that its non-negotiable – the hubs must run proper internships for doctors, nurses, midwives, and psychologists.
“We’ve said this is what an internship looks like – it has ring-fenced jobs, those jobs are suitable for first year graduates, and they must have mentoring, career advice, performance management, and pastoral care imbedded in them. That’s what we expect,” said Gorman.
He said the message had been consistent to DHBs since HWNZ first started talking hubs and they had been told that if they continued “behaving like this next year” then money was at risk.
“The money is a dry run this year. But in the financial year 2013-14, there will be money at risk. In the financial year 2014-15, it won’t just be money at risk, it will be the entire funding at risk.”
Ring-fenced places for medical graduates is long established but at present only some boards do the same for nursing graduates. Gorman said the issue of midwife internships was complicated because the profession was divided over whether they were necessary, while graduate psychologists struggled the most to find first year jobs.
“I will think that most of the anxiety over internships in the next couple of years will be around nurses because that is where the major challenge will be for employers to get their act together in terms of protected jobs,” said Gorman.
“But with all due respect, some DHBs can do it, and if some can do it, they all can do it.”
Chief nurse Jane O’Malley said she needed to talk to the HWNZ chair before she could comment further as she was unaware of the move.
“I think its great that he’s supporting the notion of encouraging DHBs to employ as many graduates in that first year as possible”.
