Wednesday, 5 February 2025

 Georgie CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (18:49): (1382) My adjournment matter this evening is for the attention of the Minister for Health, and it is in relation to graduate nurses. In December last year there was concern that had been raised in the media about graduate nurses having their hours cut back at both the Royal Melbourne Hospital and the Alfred. The Royal Melbourne actually reinstated the hours for the graduate nurse program back to full-time capacity but not so in other places, and that is leaving huge amounts of gaps and concerns for those nurses who are really relying on those extra hours and the income.

The graduate nurse program is obviously a very good program that is supportive of those nurses in their transition and assists with their clinical and theoretical skills during that transition year. The issue I want to raise, though, is that I asked the minister a question in October about the numbers of graduate nurses for 2022 and 2023. I was told 12,000 nurses graduated. I have not got the numbers for last year, but they will be released, I expect, in due course. 8700 of those 12,000 were given graduate placements in our public hospitals. What I want to understand, and the action I am seeking from the minister, is: of the 3300 others that did not take up the offer to participate in the graduate nurse program, how many of those nurses are working in the public system? Have they left the state? Are they in the private system? Does the government track those 3300 nurses that have graduated but have not undertaken the nurse graduate program?

The reason I am asking is that I think it is important to understand exactly where new graduates are going, what experience they are getting, how they are being supervised and whether that is being properly monitored. I think we need to understand the expertise and the support that new nurses require, especially in the very stressful situation that we have in our health system.