Nurses and midwife graduates who stay in Aotearoa for five years could have more than $22,000 of their student loans paid off under National's new policy to discourage them from taking up "aggressive" offers from abroad.
Party leader Christopher Luxon has unveiled his plan this morning to draft thousands more nurses and midwives into the health system if his party wins the election.
But Health Minister Ayesha Verrall claimed that National's policy "won't mean much" and that the party had been fast-and-loose with explaining how bad staff shortages were.
National has pledged $22k of student loan help for nurses and midwives. (Source: 1News)
The new proposals to cover nursing students' loan repayments and to draft in additional staff from overseas would cost around $57 million per annum over four years.
"New Zealand does not train enough nurses or midwives to address this shortage, and the ones we do train are being aggressively recruited to move overseas.
He said the funding for the policy would "come from the $151 million per year in unallocated savings remaining from National’s commitment to reduce spending on contractors and consultants".
Nearly 5000 Kiwi nurses have registered to work in Australia since August last year.
National claimed 19,000 doctors had moved overseas in the last five years, but the Government has hit back over the figures.
"Dr Reti is wrong, and he knows he's wrong," Verrall told 1News.
What's National's new policy?
The first would see the Government take on paying nurses’ and midwives’ student loan repayments up to a total of $4500 a year for the first five years of their career, provided they remain working in their profession in New Zealand.
"This means a nurse or midwife over five years would be $22,500 better off," he said.
"If a nurse or midwife does not complete their five-year bonding period – for example, by changing professions or moving overseas – the student loan repayments made on their behalf would be added back to their loan balance.
"This will also be open to registered nurses and midwives already in the workforce who have graduated within the last five years, on a pro-rata basis. This will support the health sector to retain these early-career nurses and midwives in New Zealand."
Secondly, Luxon said he would also create a new temporary visa that would allow qualified "overseas nurses and midwives to come here on a six-month visa without a job offer to look for work and to bring their immediate family members with them".
“We will also establish a relocation support scheme, offering up to 1000 qualified overseas nurses and midwives relocation grants worth up to $10,000 each to support their move to New Zealand."
"Nurses and midwives are at the frontline of our collapsing health system and are bearing the brunt of the shortage. Having to work long shifts without enough staff is driving stress, anxiety and burnout. Something needs to urgently change."
Govt accuses National of 'desperate tactic'
Health Minister Ayesha Verrall claimed National's newly-announced policy "won't mean much" and that it missed the key issues within the sector.
"The announcement by National today won't mean much to nurses," she told 1News.
"One of the most important things we can do for health professionals is to raise their pay so they are attracted into the workforce and stay there. That's what we're doing."
She said the "most effective way to grow our nursing workforce is to pay them more."
Verall claimed National was using a "desperate tactic" in relation to a figure suggested by the party that 19,000 nurses have left New Zealand in the past
In his media release announcing the new policy, Luxon said: “In the last five years under Labour, almost 19,000 nurses have left the public health system.
"Nurses and midwives are doing their best, but they have been badly failed by a government that has not prioritised investing in the frontline."
Verrall responded: "Dr Reti is wrong, and he knows he's wrong. That's the number of nurses that changed jobs in the last five years, and I told him that.
"It's a desperate tactic in an election year from Dr Reti."
Te Whatu Ora told 1News that the figure cited by National included nurses moving between districts and moving out of the hospital system.
"We have not lost 19,000 nurses from Te Whatu Ora or former district health boards in the last five years," a spokesperson said.
"The data provided in the Written Parliamentary Question includes people who leave one district to work in another role in New Zealand – so it includes nurses moving from Auckland to work in Taranaki, or who move from working in one of our hospitals to working in a community service like aged residential care.
"We are focused on ensuring more care is provided close to home and that New Zealanders have more access to early and preventative care in the community – which requires that more of our nurses work in primary and community settings.
"When we look at data on the number of nurses employed by Te Whatu Ora, it shows there has been an increase in the number of nurses Te Whatu Ora employs of 4108 FTE (19% increase) since March 2017."
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