Talk of increasing graduate numbers to meet future demand when current graduates are unemployed is a “difficult” but “critical” conversation, says Nursing Council chief executive Carolyn Reed.
Reed was commenting on the recent release of the council-commissioned full report into The Future Nursing Workforce which predicts a 15,000 nursing shortfall in 2035 if action is not taken soon to start working towards doubling the number of nursing graduates each year. (see below News Feed article)
Dr Ruth Anderson, acting director of Health Workforce New Zealand, said its workforce projection modeling showed similar findings to the Council’s report and suggested that by 2018 New Zealand would have to start increasing the number of nurses to meet demand.
A recent survey confirmed that only half of mid-year graduating nurses had found nursing jobs by the end of July and up to 25 per cent of graduates who sat state finals in November last year were still job hunting four months later.
The job market for new graduates has been difficult since 2010 after the recession lead to a steep decline in nursing turnover and health budgets tightened.
A Nursing Review preview story in July, about the projected shortfall and need to increase graduate numbers, prompted a number of online comments from unemployed graduates saying it was “irresponsible” to increase student intakes when the jobs were not there or to keep recruiting overseas nurses.
Anderson said progress was being made on improving the recruitment of new graduate nurses and New Zealand’s graduate employment levels still compared favourably to other countries including some areas of Australia and the United States.
Reed said it commissioned the nursing supply report in response to a “sense of urgency” amongst nursing leaders who wanted a clear understanding of future workforce need projections. And the report had concluded that longterm New Zealand needed to increase the number of nurse graduates substantially.
“These are difficult conversations to have in the context of (today’s) graduates not gaining employment but none the less critical conversations,” said Reed.
She said if New Zealand kept on doing what it was doing now the nursing supply would be adequate until 2020 but then a nursing shortage would start to hit, due to population growth and the increased health needs of an ageing population, to the point the country was 15,000 nurses short by 2035.
Nursing supply was very sensitive to any changes to the number of nursing students, said Reed. “And increasing capacity to educate more nurses may be dependent on developing different models of clinical education and increasing investment in nurse education.”
She said the Nursing Council had already responded to the report by developing new annual data reporting requirements for nursing schools and working alongside the nurse educator group NETS who were setting standards for simulated learning in undergraduate programmes.
Reed said it was also awaiting the findings early next year of research undertaken by the USA’s National Council of State Boards of Nursing into using simulation in undergraduate nursing programmes. Meanwhile the council’s nursing supply report was being made widely available.
“It is hoped that the administrators, policy makers, health workforce planners, educators and others who are amassing trends and developing plans for a safe and effective future of health care delivery will find this report useful.”
No comment from Health Minister’s office
The office of the Minister of Health Tony Ryall did not respond to a Nursing Review request for a comment on the BERL report and instead forwarded the request to Health Workforce New Zealand (HWNZ).
Anderson said more future planning was being undertaken by HWNZ including providing support for new roles for nursing in registered nurse first surgical assistants and “other roles that contribute directly to addressing government priorities and health targets”.
She said regarding current graduate employment that the new central ACE recruiting system for new graduate jobs in the public and community health sector meant the Ministry of Health and district health boards had “much better information about where and when new graduates were gaining employment”. “Also nursing initiatives are underway to encourage more nurses to work in the areas of aged care and rest home care.”
