Pages

Saturday, February 24, 2024

Ele Ludemann: Labour’s legacy – nurses leaving


This is part of Labour’s legacy:

More than 9000 New Zealand nurses have registered to work in Australia in the past 10 months – about 12 percent of the active workforce.

The rate of nurses expressing interest is growing, despite a boost in pay last year.

Any nurse wanting to work in Australia must first get a registration with the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (Ahpra).

The latest figures show an average of 900 a month had signed up in the 10 months until January. In April last year, the average was 625 a month over eight months. . .

Registering to work doesn’t mean all these nurses will cross the Tasman to work but it is an indictment on the mess Labour made of the health system that so many are contemplating it.

Who can blame them for seeking better pay and conditions than staying here where so many hospitals are understaffed, and nurses are overworked and underpaid?

The last government wasted millions of dollars restructuring the health system instead of addressing the problems of staff shortages across the sector.

That so many are considering leaving to work in Australia is a result of that and part of Labour’s legacy of spending too much money in the wrong places and too little where it was, and still is, desperately needed.

Ele Ludemann is a North Otago farmer and journalist, who blogs HERE - where this article was sourced.

4 comments:

Robert Arthur said...

I suspect it is just not pay and workload. A large proportion of our population now has an entitlement attitude and contempt for official organisation such as a hospital. Beavering away for contemptious patients and rabble hangers on is not satisfying.

DeeM said...

There must be a massive nursing shortage in Oz! Where are all their nurses going?
Or do they not bother to train any. They just have a more attractive country and grab ours instead.

CXH said...

DeeM - with their high immigration they would struggle to train enough. Of course we have a similar problem of training enough to cover the high quality immigration we have.

As for nicking ours, we are happy to do the same to India, Philippines etc..

Anonymous said...

For every nurse on the front line there are 9 other administrators behind her / him.
Is the job the nurse is trying to do , the best for the patient, or to satisfy the whims of the administration staff ?
So much waste of time and talent.
No wonder our front line staff are worn out and fed up especially when they have to put " cultural safety" ahead of clinical procedures ?
As for all the Maori nonsense that they have to pander to or else they are criticized .......

Post a Comment

Thanks for engaging in the debate!

Because this is a public forum, we will only publish comments that are respectful and do NOT contain links to other sites. We appreciate your cooperation.