Jeremy Rockliff,Minister for Health
Recruiting and retaining nurses into our health system is a major focus of the Tasmanian Liberal Government.
A big part of that is our successful Transition to Practice program, which provides opportunities for graduate nurses as they embark on their careers to become the next generation of our health workforce.
The Transition to Practice program provides valuable experience in real-world nursing clinical settings, and many of the current graduates have accepted jobs within our health system, including in difficult to recruit to areas such as mental health and intensive care.
We recruited 273 newly registered and enrolled nurses into the program across the state in 2021 and expect to recruit a similar number for next year.
Applications for the next intake will open next week, with positions starting in January, February and April next year.
The Transition to Practice program is part of our strategy to ensure that we are constantly renewing the workforce as people retire or move elsewhere for work.
The program provides additional support, tailored to the requirements of the graduate's new role, and we are proud to have significantly boosted the number of positions available since 2014.
Transition to Practice positions are available in a wide range of practice settings, including in our metropolitan and rural hospitals, with the program being open to all newly qualified registered nurses, enrolled nurses and midwives with less than six months post-registration experience.
At the same time, we are running advertisements and campaigns to recruit additional health staff to support our $156 million elective surgery blitz.
More than 180 staff are expected to be needed statewide to support this increase in volume, and the recruitment process is well underway. This is part of our plan to recruit an additional 280 full-time equivalent staff to support new and boosted services across Tasmania.
We have also established a new Health Staff Recruitment Taskforce with health stakeholders, including unions, to look at how we can improve recruitment across our health system.
It is important that we work collaboratively together to recruit and retain the staff our state needs to boost services and ensure Tasmanians can get the right care, in the right place, at the right time.
