Health Workforce Australia (HWA) has been working in partnership with stakeholders to support 2011 nursing and midwifery graduates across Australia to find employment. 2012 will be an important year for nursing and midwifery, with significant growth in the number of graduates entering the workforce. With employer recruitment processes for the 2012 intake now well advanced, some graduates are yet to secure a suitable position.

About the Nursing and Midwifery Graduate Jobs Information Portal

In consultation with an Expert Reference Group, HWA is developing a web-based Nursing and Midwifery Graduate Jobs Information Portal to support these graduates, as well as those employers with unfilled vacancies suitable for graduates. The portal is designed to complement employers’ usual recruitment processes by offering a site to post information about vacancies suitable for graduates and application processes. The portal also offers nursing and midwifery graduates a one-stop shop for linking with employers and identifying where vacancies may exist in the public and private health sectors across Australia.

The portal will be available at nmgj.org.au in the coming weeks.

Who the portal will support

The portal is aimed at the 2011 domestic and international nursing and midwifery graduate cohort of Australian universities. It is limited to registered nurses and midwives, but has potential to be expanded to support enrolled nurses in the future.

All Australian public and private sector employers of nursing and midwifery graduates are eligible to register with the portal and as from 30 January 2012, employers will be able to upload information about any unfilled positions suitable for graduates, application processes and graduate program outlines into the portal.

How the portal will work

In order to best complement existing graduate recruitment processes, the portal will provide:

• key messages for nursing and midwifery graduates about finding a suitable position;
• an electronic notice board for employers to advertise nursing and midwifery positions
• suitable for graduates and / or intake rounds as they become available; and
• links to key employer websites and recruitment pages.

Key dates

The portal will open for employers to upload their information from 30 January 2012.

The portal will open for nursing and midwifery graduates to register from 13 February 2012.

If you have any further questions, please contact Jane Austin, Program Manager, Health Workforce Australia at Jane.Austin@hwa.gov.au or (08) 8409 4555.

Congratulations to all nurses who have completed their studies and received their graduation certificates this week.

ANF will continue to be a voice for you now and throughout your nursing careers. We wish you luck for the future.

The Minister for Health has announced the Graduate Nurse intake for 2012; but it falls far short of the number of places offered in recent years. A total of up to 98 part time Graduate Nurse positions will be offered for next year via a recruitment register, which is yet to be established.

 Over recent years around 120-150 Graduate positions have been offered by the Department, and numbers for this year are only two thirds that figure. 

Over 300 students will graduate at the end of this year, and they are being presented with very limited opportunities to work in Tasmania.

The Government has indicated that planning for these Graduate positions next year is the result of ‘careful workforce planning’. But it’s the result of budget cuts – cuts that are impacting on our future nursing workforce.

Nursing students have rallied against the deferral and lack of commitment from DHHS to the Transition to Practice program.  The ANF fully supports the commitment these students are showing to the future of nursing in Tasmania, and demands the same level of commitment from the Government in line with previous years.

There has been a lot of talk about transition to practice positions over the last two months and students are disappointed that the placement opportunities we had thought were going to made available aren’t there. Indeed, the DHHS is offering less than 100 Transition to Practice placements at this point in time. 

Perhaps more frustrating than the amount of positions, is how the news is being handled. The initial announcement that the Transition to Practice program was to be suspended came after the deadline for similar positions in other states had closed. It was also three days after co-ordinators had toured the state providing education to students in their third year on the various processes involved in obtaining a transition program placement and what to expect.  It seems impossible that in those three days the Department found it necessary to make such major adjustments in how the program would be run and that the number of positions would need to be adjusted so dramatically. 

Nursing students are in a unique position when they graduate. There is a vast difference between what the university provides as a qualification and what employers in the acute care setting expect from a nurse operating autonomously, making obtaining a Transition to Practice program place vital in the career of the graduate nurse.  If the current course structure is to remain intact it’s important for the Department to ensure the transition program remain viable as a tool toward staff progression planning, not just for the immediate future but long term as well.  Instead the current focus on cost cutting seems to be reactionary with little thought to long term needs or structure.

Communication and transparency is a cornerstone in any organisation and is certainly foremost of importance in obtaining morale.  The perception of students is that these two elements are absent, not just in relation to this program but all aspects of the proposed cuts to health care.  Health care professionals are constantly being made to feel that these cuts are coming and that the minster is yet to sign off on anything. The reality is that many cuts are already being instigated and the impact is being felt across the state with the lack of clear direction impacting on morale and patient focused care.

Matt Tyson, UTAS Student and ANF Student Representative

On 16 September 2011, the DHHS released a fact sheet on the Transition to Practice Program for 2012.

http://www.dhhs.tas.gov.au/career/home/nurses2/training_and_research/rntp

UTAS Nursing students from around the state headed to Parliament Lawns in Hobart this morning to meet with Will Hodgman and the media in a protest against the recently announced cuts to graduate nursing positions.

The Government has given no definitive information to the students or the ANF about how many graduate places will be offered to students registering this year, saying simply that there will be an Expression of Interest for those seeking to work in the Department. Graduate names will then be placed on a register, and people will be contacted if a position becomes available. Other States and Territories have already closed applications for graduate nursing positions, so students in Tasmania are effectively being given no option but to sit and wait.

With mature age students making up a large proportion of the nursing graduates, the government needs to realise the ramifications of cutting these positions. People with families to support and mortgages to pay have been thrown into limbo by a government that doesn’t understand the importance of our health sector.

 ANF is asking the Government to take some responsibility for the health of the community and the livelihood of these students. Around 300 nursing students will graduate this year. They have taken the time to study nursing in Tasmania, and they want to stay in Tasmania. They shouldn’t be forced to move interstate to get a job in the profession they have chosen.

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