It’s been crickets since the strategy disappeared into a DoHDA desk drawer.
It has been 510 days since the federal government published the report from the second round of consultation on the National Nursing Workforce Strategy.
Since then, it’s been crickets from the Albanese government, a situation that the Australian College of Nursing, in the hours before the federal budget is delivered tonight, said needed to change urgently.
Acting ACN CEO Dr Zachary Byfield said Australia would continue to produce nursing graduates who couldn’t find a job or left their careers early until a national strategy was put in place to guide the nursing workforce.
“At a time when productivity in healthcare has never been more important, we cannot continue to keep flying blind with our nursing workforce without nationally coordinated planning,” Dr Byfield said today.
“We are wasting resources and robbing consumers of the best care when, where and how they need it.”
The National Nursing Workforce Strategy has been in the works since September of 2023, when a five-month consultation process with nurses and other stakeholders was undertaken by the Albanese government.
The resulting draft National Nursing Workforce Strategy was then released for public consultation from September 2024 for a month.
Then followed the second consultation report, released on 19 December 2024. Its top three recommendations were:
- create nationally consistent nursing workforce planning and career structures;
- improve nurse retention through better remuneration, safer workplaces and clearer career pathways; and
- expand nurses’ scope of practice and role in system redesign.
Since then, the national strategy has languished in a government desk drawer.
The ACN said Australia was staring down a nursing workforce shortage of more than 70,000 by 2035.
Dr Byfield said the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing had developed a National Nursing Workforce Strategy and that it was now time to release and implement it.
“The consequences of continuing to operate without a strategy are stark,” Dr Byfield said.
“We are producing nursing graduates, but we do not have enough new graduate roles for them to go into.
“We are also seeing far too many early-career nurses abandon their clinical roles because of a lack of support and direction in the high-pressure field of nursing.”
In its pre-budget submission, the ACN called on the federal government to consider its strategies for productivity and health. These include:
- reversing declining vaccination rates: establishing nurse-led vaccination clinics and creating a Nurse Payment Administrator to improve access and restore immunisation coverage;
- retaining and growing the nursing workforce to prevent a projected shortfall of more than 70,000 nurses by 2035 by introducing transition programs and retirement support;
- expanding medicine access: scaling registered nurse prescribing by educating 2,500 RN prescribers to improve medication access in underserved areas;
- unlocking primary care capacity: establishing nurse-led primary care practices and providing baseline practice payments to improve access;
- reducing aged care hospital admissions: providing scholarships for aged care nurses and scaling nurse practitioner-led models to prevent avoidable hospitalisations; and
- expanding hospital capacity: using National Productivity Fund payments to incentivise states and territories to enable advanced nursing roles, including nurse anaesthetists and nurse endoscopists.
Dr Byfield said business-as-usual healthcare was under real pressure.
“The Australian College of Nursing believes we can spend the health budget more effectively to achieve better outcomes, including by enabling nurses to work to their full scope of practice.”
In response to questions from Dermatology Republic’s sister publication HSD, a spokesperson for the DoHDA said:
- The Commonwealth Chief Nursing and Midwifery Officer and the Victorian Chief Nurse and Midwifery Officer led the development of Australia’s first National Nursing Workforce Strategy in collaboration with all state and territory nursing and midwifery leaders and peak bodies.
- The strategy has been developed from a significant evidence base – over 7000 stakeholders were engaged in two rounds of consultation; 19 environment scans and literature reviews were completed and a supply and demand study undertaken.
- The strategy establishes priorities to guide the nursing workforce now and into the future. It will provide a framework to help address workforce challenges, foster collaboration, and drive action among stakeholders in shaping the future of nursing workforce planning, investment, and reform.
- The strategy is progressing through an approval process under the relevant governance bodies. Endorsement of the strategy will subsequently be sought from all Health Ministers.
- The Department recognises jurisdictional engagement, support, and willingness to commit to the strategy which is critical for reform.
