A new nursing academy is being set up to increase the number of qualified nurses and healthcare workers in Aotearoa, and to help address the current workforce issues in the sector.
Healthcare Academy New Zealand’s facility, which is in Auckland, expects to train hundreds of enrolled nurses each year with the capacity to train up to 1,000 people across various fields.
Chief executive Ana Maria Rivera says the doors are ready to open so they can help support the critically understaffed health sector.
“The focus is really building a stronger homegrown workforce that meets the skill shortages we know that we’ve got in the healthcare sector.”
After conversations with colleges that provide health qualifications and tertiary educators, nursing was found to be one area with “severe shortages”.
Students will be working toward obtaining a qualification in 18 months, as opposed to a three-year bachelor of nursing degree.
The academy will launch initially with the Diploma in Enrolled Nursing, with the programme to expand to meet industry needs in allied health, aged care, and mental health and addiction.
Holistic approach
Rivera says enrolled nurses could play a significant role to help alleviate short-term shortages.
To encourage Māori and Pasifika to enrol, Rivera says that having a holistic approach is the “secret sauce”.
“It involves whānau. We get to know what a student’s life outside of college looks like. A lot of them have family commitments trying to juggle helping out at home and studying, so I think the fact that we’ve got this smaller class size, a lot of learner support, is how we get the outcomes we can get.
“It’s not just one student who goes through the journey – it’s a whole family, actually when they enrol with us.”
Though the cost will probably be the same as much as any other provider, clinical placements will also have to be handled out of their own pocket, which is an issue that Rivera hopes to address later.
“It’s a hard journey to start in the first place. On top of that, they’re doing 750 to 900 clinical placement hours, and they’re having to fund that themselves, so that’s quite tough.”
