Hundreds of nurses go overseas

Press, 21 August 1979, Page 23

Hundreds of nurses go overseas

Hundreds of nurses leave New Zealand each year because they find more rewarding jobs overseas.. Mr David Wills, director of the Nurses’ Society, said in Nelson that 508 nurses had left New Zealand in the first three months of this year. In the year ended March 31, 1100 nurses left for jobs overseas. The previous year, 828 left.

Figures from the last quarter suggested this trend would continue. Mr Wills was in Nelson to talk to nursing students at the Nelson Polytechnic about the Nurses’ Society and what it offers. He said the drift overseas was one of the big problems facing the nursing profession. The society had begun its own research into the reasons nurses were leaving.

There was every reason to think the main reason was because conditions overseas were more'rewarding. “The rewards are more satisfying and the nurses are not having to work under financial and other pressures. The loss of nurses overseas might be acceptable if they were going to areas of greater need. “But they are not. They are going to Australia, Britain, and North America. “In the last 12 months, 650 registered nurses and an equal number of other nursing personnel went to Australia. In return, 150 Australian nurses came here,” Mr Wills said.