More than 1200 new graduate nurses are competing for just 707 jobs on offer in the first round of the new ‘one-stop job shop’ for new graduate placements.
District health boards are due to be sending out job offers to the successful candidates on November 9 as the new graduate clearinghouse is tested for the first time. A second ‘mop-up’ round is due to follow in early December.
Chief Nurse Jane O’Malley said the number of first round jobs was higher than earlier DHB forecasts, and based on the previous years’ experience, it expected more DHB positions to become available in coming months as new vacancies became available.
The clearinghouse ‘one-stop job shop’ is only for places in government-subsidised NETP (nursing entry to practice) or NESP (mental health) new graduate programmes, with each DHB receiving $7200 for each registered nurse (RN) graduate to provide additional support to the new RNs in their first year of practice. The majority of NETP positions are in hospital settings but there are also NETP places in primary health and residential aged care.
The number of graduates that find jobs outside the clearinghouse system, for example, in private hospitals or across the Tasman, will not be known until the nursing schools’ annual graduate survey is held next year (the survey found about 85 per cent of last year’s graduates were nursing but of those only 66 per cent were signed up to DHB new graduate programmes).
The new graduate ‘clearinghouse’ is helping meet one of Jane O’Malley’s aims since taking the post of Chief Nurse – having sooner and better data on the annual DHB graduate recruitment cycle.
“The tool will also help us gain a national picture of graduate numbers by providing better information about our graduates and where they find work,” said O’Malley.
She said her second aim is to be able to employ as many graduates as possible without overstepping the district health boards’ staffing establishment numbers and was working with directors of nursing to help meet that aim.
Funding for about 1150 subsidised new graduate places is available for NETP and NESP programmes each year but the actual numbers of places offered by DHBs have in recent years failed to meet this cap due to low nurse turnover and tight budgets.
O’Malley wants to take out the uncertainty over jobs available for graduates each year and is ‘encouraging’ DHBs to ring-fence a guaranteed number of dedicated new graduate jobs. The graduates would be offered a 12-month contract to ensure the ring-fenced positions are vacant a year later, ready to be filled by the next cohort of new graduates.
Some DHBs, like Waikato, already ring-fence graduate positions and other boards have indicated they will follow, while yet others still operate a vacancy driven model and offer permanent contracts. O’Malley said boards that do offer 12-month new graduate contracts are typically able to find permanent vacancies for most nurses in ringfenced positions by the end of that time.
Meanwhile, trans-Tasman recruiting of new graduates was on the agenda when O’Malley and HWNZ director Brenda Wraight met recently with chief nurses from across Australia.
“The message to Australia is we think that you, like us, need to grow sufficient numbers for your workforce requirement and employ locally grown nurses in their own local area in their first year of practice,” said O’Malley. She said the “collegial request” drew some empathy from Tasmania and the Northern Territories who have similar situations with their workforce being ‘sucked up’ by other states.
“We know that nurses will travel and we wouldn’t want ever want to stop that but nurses that are employed in their first year of practice locally, even if they later travel, are more likely to come home, said O’Malley.
“But if we are going to do that (request trans-Tasman colleagues not to recruit New Zealand’s new graduates) than we need to offer places to our own graduates because otherwise it’s a bit hollow.”
