Nearly 5000 New Zealand nurses have registered to work in Australia since August.<\/p>\n
It shows the extent of those crossing – or planning to cross – the ditch, often to take up lucrative short-term contracts of up to NZ$8500 a week.<\/p>\n
There is a huge nursing shortage here, a major contributor to delays in emergency departments, surgery and many other services.<\/p>\n
Rotorua nurse Tracey Morgan had her last day at her community clinic on Thursday and was planning to go to Australia.<\/p>\n
She was emotional, staying on hours after she was due to finish to help the only other nurse working.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t realise this day would come so fast and that I’d be … real sad,” she said.<\/p>\n
Morgan, a former president of the union the Nurses Organisation, said like many nurses who have walked away, she loved her job but was burnt out.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t want to be one of those numbers, but they’re not investing enough in the nurses that are here to keep us.”<\/p>\n
To be able to work in Australia, Kiwi nurses must first formally register with the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency.<\/p>\n
An agency spokesperson said since August, 4951 have done just that.<\/p>\n
It did not measure how many went on to take up work.<\/p>\n
Nurses Organisation kaiwhakahaere Kerri Nuku said it took a lot of effort to register so most of those who had, already had “one foot out the door.”<\/p>\n
Many were going for short stints, sometimes leaving their family behind for a few weeks, then coming home for a few weeks and going again, she said.<\/p>\n
The good places to go were spread by word of mouth.<\/p>\n
Te Whatu Ora chief executive Fepulea’i Margie Apa said the number who had registered in Australia was a serious worry if it resulted in people taking up jobs.<\/p>\n
“We need every nurse that we can find in New Zealand as well as as many from overseas that we can attract to come and work here, so that is a real concern.”<\/p>\n
A Melbourne medical recruiter told RNZ short-term contracts ranged from about $3500 to about $8000 Australian dollars a week, depending on factors including seniority, expertise and the length of the contract.<\/p>\n
The money included allowances, such as for working in a remote location.<\/p>\n
Contracts started at about four weeks and went to about 18 months, and nurses had the ability to visit home during that time, she said.<\/p>\n
Nuku said there was an additional worry that the health system was losing many M\u0101ori nurses to the short Australian contracts – they were already under-represented.<\/p>\n
But she did not blame any nurse for taking up the opportunity.<\/p>\n
“They’re going over, they’re getting better recognition, better pay, short term, and they can bring in additional money to the house hold budget.”<\/p>\n
There were about 54,000 nurses working in New Zealand, some of them part time.<\/p>\n
Last year, the estimated shortage was 4000 but Te Whatu Ora said it did not know what the current situation was.<\/p>\n
The Nurses Organisation said it wanted money specifically allocated in this year’s budget for funding for nurses.<\/p>\n
Te Whatu Ora’s Margie Apa said the board had yet to put its recommendations to cabinet, but funding for staff was top of mind.<\/p>\n
Source: RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nearly 5000 New Zealand nurses have registered to work in Australia since August. It shows the extent of those crossing – or planning to cross – the ditch, often to take up lucrative short-term contracts of up to NZ$8500 a week. There is a huge nursing shortage here, a major contributor to delays in emergency […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":3957,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3956"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3958,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3956\/revisions\/3958"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}