Immigration just part of answer to nursing shortage – Health Minister

Health Minister Andrew Little says the government is working with immigration and the union to get more nurses into the country.

Only 22 have arrived since August, and the Nursing Council estimates about 4000 are needed. 

Little told Checkpoint he is also looking at measures to encourage more people to train as nurses.

“Of the 341 nurses have been approved with their visas, 22 with those have come from offshore in the last three months,” he said. 

The ones already here now have the guarantee of residency and will stay here longer, he said.

“There are others who have been approved but haven’t yet arrived. Bearing in mind that for those who are coming here to take up residency… The time it takes to extract themselves from their current circumstances, their job, living circumstances, it takes months to do that. So that’s not unusual.”

Nurses already here on short-term visas which are about to expire qualify for the new visa which gives them a guaranteed pathway to residency after two years, Little said. 

The number of applications for the visa to work in the New Zealand health system is up to nearly 1200, he told Checkpoint, and nearly 700 have been approved. 

“I want those vacancies filled as quickly as possible. So that’s why in addition to immigration, we’ve got other initiatives on as well. Targeting former nurses, those who have been registered nurses but don’t have their annual practising certificate anymore, getting them back into the profession.

“We’re doing everything we can to fill those vacancies as fast as we can.”

The Health Minister said there are several programmes of work underway with Health NZ, and if there are other strategies to boost the workforce, he is “very keen” to hear from others in the health workforce. 

“It will never be just sort of one thing…. It’ll be everything we can possibly do and it won’t be officials or senior health managers who will have all the solutions. There will be solutions lying elsewhere, let’s hear them if there are others.”

Short term, Little said immigration is one step, and re-employing the “latent nursing workforce” is another. A long-term solution is boosting the numbers of nurses being educated in New Zealand.