COVID and Experience are not the only reason for the Nurse shortage.

Nurses from all over the world have been heavily impacted with many GPs and hospitals being extremely short-staffed, underpaid and with COVID causing many nurses to be burned out.   

Governments are trying to get more nurses with Western Australia’s McGowan-led Labour government

announcing in 2021, he would inject 600 new graduates into the system which would only put a band-aid over the issue.   

While COVID has posed an issue with many qualified nurses going into higher-paid testing and immunisation roles, the number of nurses in hospitals has been declining for decades, resulting in hospitals being left behind.

Co-founder of Chemo@home Lorna Cook speaks about why we are seeing more nurses leave, especially with past nurses traditionally being trained in hospitals and following graduation they were already ‘battle hardened’ and could hit the ground running with little support, often staying on in that hospital providing a steady flow of experienced nurses.   

Training in TAFE and university began in WA during the 1980s with Ms Cook saying these

Nurses have a deep and more thorough understanding of the SCIENCE of nursing, but who needed more support in the first few years to really become more practised in the ART of nursing.” 

Hospitals are now choosing not to invest in newly graduated nurses and look internationally to more experienced nurses. 

“This money saving venture was designed to save several years of the nurturing and support of young nurses,” she said.  

“Subsequently, graduate nurses have fought year in and year out to find a job in the WA health care system until they are “experienced” enough, with many ironically going overseas to gain this experience before returning to WA.”

More local nurses are now having to go overseas to get experience, private hospitals are now offering incentives to lure friends and colleagues away from existing high-paying roles.

An Australian health think-tank was known as the Grattan Institute which is saying the future of healthcare lies in community nursing.

“With COVID closing wards, the delay in the treatment of patients with cancer and chronic illnesses, leaves us as a community with big problems in the very near future.” Ms Cook said.

“They tell us there is a tsunami of these patients who will flood hospitals with more progressive diseases because diagnosis and treatment have been delayed.

“It tells us that the days of the big public hospital system treating elective patients who are not ‘sick’ eg the chronically ill who visit hospitals for ongoing care are over.   

Public hospitals in Australia are funded by the federal government allocating money to each state based on the number of treats the hospital administers to their patients. 

“Community nursing offers graduate nurses the ability to be integrated into the wider system, not thrown into a stressful high acuity ward with little or no support.”

“This is the way of the future not the token gesture of offering our own graduates a one-off promise of a stress filled employment offer.”