Thousands studied nursing because we paid for their degrees. Now, their jobs have vanished

2 days ago 4

Thousands of Victorians finishing their nursing degrees face the prospect of unemployment next year despite the state government paying for their university fees in a bid to boost the public health workforce.

Victoria’s powerful Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation wrote to its student members on Friday afternoon to warn that more than 2000 graduate nurses and midwives would be left without a graduate position in the public health system in 2026, up from about 350 this year.

It has blamed the situation on “poor planning and short-sightedness”, and is calling on the Allan government to step in with an emergency package worth tens of millions of dollars to ensure the nursing and midwifery graduates secure work.

Thousands of student nurses will not have graduate positions.

“We need these graduate nurses and midwives,” said the union’s state secretary, Maddy Harradence.

Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation state secretary Maddy Harradence.

“It is absurd to fund nursing and midwifery degrees and then not employ them when they graduate.”

Professor Beth Jacob, the head of the Australian Catholic University’s School of Nursing, Midwifery and Paramedicine, said the cost-of-living crisis had led to lots of part-time nurses picking up extra shifts and more nurses delaying retirement.

She said this had improved retention rates and distorted the state government’s previous predictions about job availability for graduate nurses.

“There’s less positions becoming available,” she said, adding that students were nervous and scared about their future.

“They’ve all had to go for their graduate year interviews,” Jacob said. “There’s been a lot more pressure on them.”

Jacob is concerned that these graduates will find work outside of nursing and never return to the profession after all the investment in their training.

“Big numbers of students will end up going into retail and hospitality,” she said.

Graduate nursing positions in Victoria are roles given to those who have just completed their tertiary education and are in their first year of practice. Budding nurses and midwives can apply for the positions only in the year they graduate.

A Victorian Health Department insider, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the union’s numbers were “absolutely accurate”.

Students enrolling in a professional-entry midwifery course in 2023 and 2024 received up to $16,500 to cover their education costs.

“Not only did the government invest in the students doing nursing, but they invested a lot in bringing in overseas nurses into Australia as well,” the department source said.

“So we’ve got a short-term oversupply in nurses. But the modelling says by 2027, we’ll be in shortage again.”

The department insider said that if the Allan government didn’t act now, Victoria’s healthcare system would soon have a “big problem”.

“This current situation is short term. So it needs a short-term solution.”

In 2022, former premier Daniel Andrews announced the state government would pay the course fees of more than 10,000 nursing and midwifery undergraduates as part of a $270 million initiative to boost staffing across Victoria’s strained health services.

Under the scheme, domestic students enrolling in a professional-entry nursing or midwifery course in 2023 and 2024 received up to a $16,500 scholarship to cover their education costs.
They received $9000 while they studied, and a further $7500 if they worked in Victorian public health services for two years.

“Year 11 and 12 students who are thinking about what they might like to do as a career, they can choose nursing, free of charge, a full scholarship covering every dollar of their HECS,” Andrews told reporters when the initiative was announced at the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation offices.

Harradence said she was calling on the Allan government to fund the 2000-or-so graduate placements given Labor had recently strengthened nurse-to-patient ratios and had overseen a significant health infrastructure pipeline.

“Taxpayer dollars have paid for them to study, and it is a wasted opportunity for this investment not to be realised,” she said.

“We cannot lose these critical graduates due to poor planning and shortsightedness.

“We urge the government to hold urgent discussions with the private acute sector about their level of investment in graduate nurses, and urgently explore all viable options to ensure we have a sustainable nursing and midwifery workforce into the future.”

The Health Department and the Allan government were contacted for comment.

More to come

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