faculty focus
Something’ s not working
Extra numbers of graduates brought in to meet future shortages are struggling to find jobs. By Louis White
Australia may be gearing up for a nursing shortage in 2025, but in the interim nursing graduates around the country are struggling to find work.
A report by Health Workforce Australia( HWA) last year revealed that Australia would face a shortage of 109,000 nurses and 27,000 doctors by 2025.
This has prompted a relaxation of guidelines to allow more students to undertake nursing studies. The gaps in the job market are yet to appear, however, leaving many graduates to ponder the wisdom of their career choice.
“ At the moment the equation is simple: too many nurses and not enough jobs,” says Elizabeth Dabars, CEO of the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation’ s South Australian branch.“ In the past, up to 80 per cent of graduate nurses in the state were being employed by South Australian Health. That’ s now at 50 per cent. We can’ t expect graduates to go to unsupervised practice.” Dabars, who has worked in regional and metropolitan settings, including acute and aged care, and who has degrees in education and law, believes the imbalance will eventually sort itself out but meanwhile federal and state governments need to revise their strategy so that they can employ more graduate nurses.
“ We need to ensure that the graduate nurses have a couple of years behind them before all the more senior nurses start to leave the system,” Dabars says.
“ The system needs to be changed so that more senior nurses can work parttime, thereby creating funds available for graduate nurses to enter the healthcare system.
“ We also need a more flexible system as to where nurses work so they can gain more valuable experience. If we could incorporate private and government practice into graduate training and placements they would benefit enormously.
“ If SA Health graduate programs allowed nurses to work in aged care and other areas of private practice, it would give a better grounding and make them more aware of future options. We would also
expose a far greater array of nurses to different opportunities.”
South Australia isn’ t the only place where graduate nurses are experiencing trouble finding suitable employment; it’ s happening across the country. Australia could find itself in an even worse predicament than HWA’ s report forecasts if graduate nurses go searching for jobs in areas outside their training.
“ As is well-documented, Australia is experiencing a growing shortage of nurses,” Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation( ANMF) federal secretary Lee Thomas says.“ That’ s why the ANMF thinks it’ s disgraceful that more and more graduate nurses can’ t find employment in their graduate year. There continue to be limited job opportunities for graduate nurses right across the country and almost every state is affected.
“ For example, Queensland is employing only 10 per cent of graduates, while in Victoria more than 800 graduate nurses are without employment.
“ It seems incredible that state governments are unable to see that not employing graduate nurses will in the long run have a devastating effect at the
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