Australia has faced a two-fold healthcare challenge in recent years: nursing burnout and an experience-complexity gap that exists between nursing experience and patients' complexity. That gap has increased in recent years because newer nurses are replacing those who worked at the bedside for years. The Australian government's National Nursing Workforce Strategy aims to address this nursing shortage crisis.
Nursing in Australia has been under huge pressure in recent years, with a decline in graduates and a growing number of nurses leaving the profession. A federal government report has estimated a shortfall of 85,000 nurses by 2025. In response, the Australian Federal Government has initiated the National Nursing Workforce Strategy, the first of its kind in the country.
“There are 420,000 registered nurses in Australia, which is more than 40% of the total healthcare workforce,” says Professor Alison McMillan, Chief Nursing and Midwifery Office of the Department of Health and Aged Care. “There is a need to ensure that this highly qualified and skilled workforce is supported to address the current and future health and aged care needs of the Australian community.”
Evidence points to burnout and experience-complexity gap
The need for intervention has been clear. In almost every national healthcare setting, nurses have been struggling with burnout, a widening experience gap, and not enough support across the healthcare ecosystem. A report from the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation pointed to the relentless pace of work, with nurses being asked to work more hours amid increasingly poor morale.
The nursing workforce strategy seeks to tackle these challenges with a focus on:
- Workforce sustainability
- Diversity of the profession
- Workforce planning
- Data sharing
- The challenges of regional, rural, and remote nursing and encouraging the uptake of positions in these areas
- The pathway from novice to expert
The March 2023 announcement of the strategy follows the release of the National Rural and Remote Nursing Generalist Framework which focuses on the needs of registered nurses in rural and remote locations in Australia and the unique skills that rural nursing requires.
Primary care nursing placements to bolster care
While nursing shortages in hospitals are often top of mind, one area that has come under particular focus in recent years is the shortage of primary care nurses, that is, nurses working outside the hospital setting. The Australian Primary Healthcare Nurses Association (APNA) has highlighted the importance of investing in primary care nursing placements and called for the creation of between 2,000 and 8,000 primary healthcare nursing placement opportunities over four years in rural, remote, and urban communities.
In a 2021-2022 pre-budget submission, APNA proposed that as many as 3,000 of the national 8,000 placement opportunities should be directed to remote or rural settings and that regional placement travel and accommodation costs should be covered for nurses, as they are for medical students, to address some of the barriers to regional nursing placements.
APNA's submission seeks to expand options for nursing students, attract more people to the profession, bolster primary care capacity, and enhance students' clinical knowledge and skills. These enhanced skills will be integral to helping nurses move from novice to expert and excel along the different stages of the journey, as defined in
