Many trained nurses are turning to charities for support and food packs amid tighter health budgets, a smaller pool of nursing vacancies, and an influx of other foreign nurses who’ve come here to get New Zealand accreditation.
Nursing Council figures show that in the year to June 2024, 5321 internationally qualified nurses came here, sat their competence assessments, and got accreditation to work—a 131% increase on the year prior, when 2299 did the same across the same time period.
These tended to be nurses trained outside of places like Australia, the US, the UK, Ireland, Singapore, or parts of Canada (British Columbia and Ontario). They must come here first to be assessed before they can apply for work.
In the year to June 2023, 8748 foreign nurses were also given a practising certificate to work in Aotearoa — but because they don’t need to undergo an assessment here, many of these may not be in the country.
Meanwhile Te Whatu Ora’s data from December 2023 shows excluding Canterbury, there was a shortage of 1816 full-time positions.
Health New Zealand chief people officer Andrew Slater says it's made good progress with recruitment, with more than 29,404 full-time staff on their books – up 2900 over the last year.
The cooler nursing market has made it hard for both foreign nurses – and even New Zealand graduates to get work within the healthcare system.
That struggle to find work has seen at least one charity raise concerns over what it’s described as an unprecedented number of foreign numbers that are coming to it for support.
Craig Fleury, the Salvation Army community ministries manager in Palmerston North, said he had around two dozen nurses who had recently reached out for support.
“From time, to time, we’ve had individual situations where people have come over, particularly on the nursing training they are doing, and they’ve got a bit stuck.
“We’ve now got around 24 or 25 nurses who are completely and utterly stuck with no prospect of moving forward.
“They have no jobs, on student visas, no support, and mostly they are supporting themselves with loans they have taken out, sometimes two loans.”
He recalled one – a nurse from India who had a baby last year before coming to do her competency course here.
“She’s over here, been working towards finding work and bringing family over. She’s completely stuck.
“They can’t afford to stay. They can’t afford to go home.”
Given the limited options available in New Zealand, he advised them to consider Australia, where the job market is more open if they could afford it.
Filipino nurses Tiffany and Michelle Maningo are now also issuing a note of caution to those who are looking at coming to New Zealand.
“A message to our Filipino families who plan to come here to New Zealand. Maybe now’s not the best time.”
The twins, both of whom have four years of nursing experience, said they put everything on the line to come to New Zealand in the hopes of being employed after completing their competency assessment programme.
But more than six months after first arriving, they continued to get rejection after rejection.
“We wake up, we go on the laptop the whole day. We go to bed. We wake up again, and all we get are rejections,” says Michelle Maningo, who has experience in emergency care.
Tiffany Maningo, who has worked in both intensive care and cardio-vascular specialities, said the natural allure of New Zealand had drawn them here, but they didn’t anticipate it would be as hard as it is.
“We are such nature lovers, we heard it’s a beautiful country…we didn’t think it would be like this.”
New Zealand Nurses Organisation chief executive Paul Goulter said officials failed in their workforce planning, which could have helped better target the nurses required from overseas.
“That all costs money, and that money is just not available,” he said.
Goulter said while the nursing numbers look like they’ve improved, the reality for those actually working across the public health sector tells a different story.
“Right throughout New Zealand, there are wards crying out for more staff.”
It also saddened him to hear that in the face of what he describes as a “nursing crisis”, foreign nurses were advising others not to come.
“They need a lot of support. They deserve a lot of support. Of course, with the budget cuts the Government is proposing to health, that is not coming. And we think that’s really tragic, because those nurses deserve better.”
Filipino nurse advocate Leizel Deligero is working on a letter she hopes to submit to the Immigration Minister, to plea for a one-off, one-year, open work visa.
She believes this will at least make it easier for employers who’ve expressed a reluctance to go through the immigration process required to hire foreign nurses.
“Of course it doesn’t mean we give them employment straight away, but we can at least give them a chance.”
When questioned, Immigration Minister Erica Stanford made it clear an immigration life-line for foreign nurses was not being considered.
“There are many nursing jobs available,” she says. “If they are unable to get one it indicates to me that they should not be in New Zealand.”
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