New graduate employment and improved workforce data are all on the agenda of a national nursing workshop being held in late November.
About 50 senior nurse leaders are to meet at the Ministry of Health in late November for the workshop being held by Health Workforce New Zealand (HWNZ) in partnership with the Office of the Chief Nurse (OCN) and the National Nurses Organisations (NNO).
Nursing Review reported in January this year that HWNZ chair Des Gorman declared that 2013 was the year the agency would dedicate to the looming nursing workforce crisis.
Jane O’Malley, Ministry of Health chief nurse, said the meeting would be a workshop as members were already aware of the issues and there was largely consensus around the need for improved workforce data, new graduate employment, and retention strategies (like the Safe Staffing Healthy Workplace, Releasing Time to Care initiatives and removing legislative and funding barriers to nurses working at the top of their scope).
She said other things likely to arise included models of care and the role of the generalist, specialist and advanced practice.
“It is a beginning conversation, not an end one,” says O’Malley.
“Past work we have done across the professions around education and workforce will feed into it.”
Kathy Holloway, chair of national nurse educator group NETS, said she saw the meeting as a culmination of the discussions that national nursing organisations (NNO) group had been having over the last year or so over developing an evidence-based model for workforce planning.
She said in order for that to happen the sector needed the data that “told the story”.
“We have to know what we’ve got before we can know what it is that we might need.”
The sector now had some really good sources of data, including the Nursing Council’s BERL report, the NETS graduate destination surveys, and ACE graduate clearing house data, but there was still some gaps to address.
“We’ve done quite a lot of work (the NNOs) and HWNZ is doing quite a bit of work – its now about getting together and sharing that data at a forum to identify what the next short term, medium term, and long term strategies are going to be.”
The meeting is to be attended by NNO representatives including the College of Nurses Aotearoa, NZNO, National Council of Maori Nurses, College of Mental Health Nurses, NETS, the Council of Deans and Nurse Executives New Zealand. HWNZ chair will be attending along with other HWNZ representatives and representatives from Health Workforce Australia.
