Who is Supporting Undergraduate Nursing and Midwifery Students to Go Bush?
“It is unbelievable to think that nurses provide over 80% of all health services in remote Australia but are continually over looked when it comes to supporting the workforce”, said Mr Wyber-Hughes, CEO of CRANAplus.
“We must find ways to encourage and support the next generation of Remote Area Nurses (RANS) and midwives. Schemes like the John Flynn scholarship work for medical students and similar schemes could be just as effective for nursing and midwifery students wanting to learn about remote health”, said Mr Cliffe, President of CRANAplus.
The reality is that travelling to a remote placement is expensive and the cost of living there is often higher. Without financial support to address these problems many student nurses considering a remote placement prior to working in remote locations give up. We have lost them before we have got them.
CRANAplus has lobbied long and hard for a well-funded scholarship program to support the RAN workforce. “Put simply, it is the RANs who provide the overwhelming majority of health care to remote Australians, if we do not invest in the future RANs, then there will be few or no health services in remote Australia in the near future’ said Mr Wyber-Hughes.
CRANAplus calls of all major political parties to acknowledge the need to invest in the future RAN workforce and make a commitment to resource scholarship access equal across all health disciplines.