College of Nurses Aotearoa (NZ) Executive Director and Professor of Nursing at Massey University has mixed feelings about todays’ announcements from Minister Little.

Excellent to see the stress on the health workforce being taken seriously. It would have been more useful to listen closely to nurse leaders advice however.

Increased investment in Nurse Practitioner education is literally a “no brainer” and it is excellent to see that 100 will now be fully funded (instead of 50) but the increase is extremely small in comparison to the investment in GPs. It is unfortunate that the investment in NPs is delayed until 2024 and that seems a terrible waste of a year.

Increasing Nurse Practitioners by a much larger margin would be a major cost effective contribution to the increasing difficulty people are having in seeing a GP or NP or enrolling in a practice at all. Unmet need for primary health care is causing immense suffering and putting hospitals under preventable pressure.

Although we understand the attraction of the more immediate fix through immigration the College of Nurses does not support immigration as the panacea for workforce shortages. As an affluent country we have no right to take health professionals from countries whose need is equally and perhaps even more serious. Growing our own and addressing attrition and supporting retention are vital strategies. We need to address the global shortage of 13 million nurses, not reshuffle them around the globe.

Increasing the use of the unregulated workforce to ensure that registered nurses extensive knowledge and skill is used to best advantage is of immense value. Not only are existing RNs experiencing intolerable pressure there is potential to see RNs work in other ways to expand the level of their contribution. But they cannot do it all and being able to supervise and delegate to capable health care assistants is one useful strategy. It is however important that registered nurses know what training the health care assistant has had and what can be expected of them.

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