The Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation (ANMF) (Vic Branch) welcomes a commitment from the Carroll Government for 500 fully funded additional graduate nursing and midwifery positions in 2027, delivered through staggered intakes across the calendar year. This commitment follows strong advocacy from the ANMF, starting in 2025 with our Use Us or Lose Us campaign.
ANMF data suggests around 1500 final year nursing and midwifery students did not receive a graduate program position in 2027. This commitment will clearly improve graduate employment outcomes, which supports nursing and midwifery workforce supply, reduces leave liability and strengthens workforce retention across metropolitan, regional and rural Victoria.
Recent workforce reforms are driving demand for nurses and midwives. These include drugs and poisons legislation reform, requiring additional nurses in public and private aged care; the Mental Health Royal Commission reform, requiring expanded forensic mental health beds; and the Safe Patient Care Act amendments, requiring an additional 260 nursing and midwifery EFT over three years (front loaded to 1 July 2027, to comply with medical surgical ratio uplifts).
"This announcement is a step in the right direction for our future workforce, who should be gainfully employed," said ANMF (Vic Branch) Secretary Maddy Harradence. "We also know, from experienced members, that they are still being asked to work double shifts and overtime and being inundated with requests to pick up roster shortfalls.
"These additional graduate nurses and midwives will ensure the Victorian healthcare system does not lose so many newly qualified and registered nurses and midwives to interstate employers or alternative careers when we have projected workforce shortages in the near future."
"This announcement is one part of the solution, ANMF will continue to advocate for additional graduate positions across our private and aged care systems to ensure all employers are preparing for the future by supporting and growing our early career nursing and midwifery workforce," Ms Harradence said.
"We also welcome the $1.7 million commitment for 200 scholarships for nurses to undertake prescribing education. The move to nurse prescribing is the biggest change to the nursing profession since we moved from hospital training to university education. This will improve patient care."
About us:
The ANMF (Vic Branch) has over 112,000 members - nurses, midwives and aged care personal care workers - across the Victorian health and aged care sectors.
