The latest graduate destination survey for enrolled nurse graduates shows an improved job success rate, with the short-staffed mental health sector being the most common destination.
Nearly 80 enrolled nurses graduated in July this year and 44 (56%) had jobs when surveyed by NETS (Nurse Education in the Tertiary Sector) at the end of September. This is up from 27 (38%) of the 71 EN graduates surveyed at the same time last year to have nursing jobs and an improvement on the mixed EN employment rate trend found by an informal Nursing Review survey earlier this year of the eight nursing schools offering the 18-month EN diploma.
Part of the upswing in jobs in the latest NETS survey seems to be due to more ENs being employed in mental health. Last year’s NETS graduate survey showed only four enrolled nurses (ENs) were employed in mental health, but 11 of this year’s mid-year cohort have been employed in mental health inpatient care units. Several times this year inpatient mental health units around the country have had to close beds because of nursing vacancies.
The next most common areas of practice for the newly employed EN graduates were continuing care elderly (9), medical/surgical wards (9), primary health (3), perioperative (3), emergency and trauma (2) and ‘other’ which included St John New Zealand and agency work.
The NETs survey also found that 25 (32%) of EN graduates surveyed were still job-hunting as at the end of September, five (6%) were not seeking work as an EN and five (6%) graduates had not completed the survey.
The survey report, prepared for NETS executive member Dr Cathy Andrew, also noted that 13 of the EN graduates said they had either started or were applying to start their Bachelor of Nursing degrees.
The mid-year EN cohorts were graduates from the Ara Institute of Canterbury, Manukau Institute of Technology, Otago Polytechnic and Whitireia nursing schools.
