The latest graduate survey indicates 80 per cent of new graduates have found nursing jobs in New Zealand and a further five per cent overseas.
More than 1050 graduates from November 2011 took part in the survey, co-ordinated by nurse educators group NETS, to get a snapshot of graduate employment as at March 31 this year.
Chief Nurse Jane O’Malley said the figures were a matter of perspective: 85 per cent employment was only good news if one believed it was acceptable to have 15 per cent of new graduates not in nursing.
Nearly 850 of the respondents had found nursing jobs in New Zealand, 53 had found jobs overseas, and 144 were not working as nurses. The 85.5 per cent employment level was the same as 2011, and similar to the 81 per cent in 2010 and the 87 per cent in 2009.
Of the graduates who had found nursing work, only 71 per cent (637) were in new graduate programmes. O’Malley said this reflected the fact that for the last two years, not all government-subsidised new graduate places offered had been filled.
O’Malley said she was looking forward to having faster and more complete data next year when the new digital “clearing house” for new graduate programme places is up and running (see other story).
Two areas she said that needed improvement were finding out more about the 15 per cent of graduates who were not known to be nursing and learning more about the 30 per cent of graduates employed but not in new graduate NETP or NESP programmes.
Paul Watson, senior advisor to the Chief Nurse, said the new clearing house recruitment system would be able to supply more information on the characteristics of graduates who have been unsuccessful in finding NETP places, including age, ethnicity, and grades.
The 1053 graduates who participated in the NETS survey was up on last year’s 700 responses. The survey showed the number of NZ-trained nurses working overseas was up from four per cent last year to five per cent this year.
The nursing programmes with the highest number of graduates heading offshore to nurse were Otago Polytechnic (17), followed by Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology (9).
The most common area of practice was again in medical or surgical wards followed by mental health, child health, primary health, and aged care.
O’Malley said the trend to about quarter of new graduates having moved into community or primary health care was good, along with the strong numbers going into mental health and aged care services.
