Co-leaders Davis Ferguson and Bianca Grimmer said the two-yearly survey would guide NZNO’s national student unit (NSU) on how best to support Aotearoa’s future workforce.
“This will help highlight key challenges and inform action,” Ferguson told Kaitiaki. “It also strengthens our advocacy for paid training by providing many years of evidence directly from tauira.”
Ferguson is chair of NZNO’s Māori student committee, Te Rūnanga Tauira, while Grimmer is national student chair. Both are co-leaders of the NSU under NZNO’s bicultural model.
The NSU’s last survey, in 2023, found a third of students were reconsidering their career choice due to short-staffing pressures amid a global nursing shortage.
Today’s workforce is facing very different challenges. Te Whatu Ora hired just over half of last year’s nursing graduates into supported-entry positions, claiming it was sufficiently staffed after a recruitment drive. Usually, it hires 80 to 90 per cent of them, former chief executive Margie Apa told Parliament’s Health Select Committee last year.
However, nurses say unsafe staffing levels persist in many areas due to budget pressures.
The 2025 student survey will cover finances, clinical placements and educational support, graduate employment, cultural safety and health and wellbeing.
Its results would be shared with nursing school heads in July, and be published in Kaitiaki.
Launched this week, it can be accessed here or by scanning the QR code above or in the poster, below.
