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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2024-02-21 Daily Xml
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Regional Nursing Students

Mr McBRIDE (MacKillop) (14:45): My question is to the Minister for Health. Will country-based nursing and allied health students who are required to travel to the city to complete compulsory placements receive any nursing reimbursement funding? With your leave, Mr Speaker, and the leave of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mr McBRIDE: As part of their training, allied health and nursing students are required to complete both rural and city placements of between four and eight weeks. They are not paid for these placements and their accommodation costs are also not covered.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:45): I thank the member for MacKillop for his question and also his strong advocacy on behalf of members of his electorate, particularly in the health area. This is an important issue and I also acknowledge it is one that has been raised not only by the member but also by the member for Mount Gambier, and also by the member for Giles on this side of the house in terms of how we can make sure that we have a pathway for regional students in nursing to be able to not face significant hurdles in undertaking their placements.

There are significant placements that are set by the national Nursing and Midwifery Board in relation to placement: some 1,000 hours or about 25 weeks that nurses and midwives have to undertake in relation to their placements, and that is a significant amount of placement. We do offer a number of different scholarships that can help nurses through that process. There is a Rural Health Undergraduate Scholarship of up to $5,000 a year, the Regional Local Health Network Scholarship, which is up to the value of $4,500, and the Professor Margaret Tobin Mental Health Scholarship, which is up to the value of $4,500. Those obviously help a number of people but we recognise that there is much more work that needs to happen here. It is something that we have discussed in the house before.

The good news is that we are making some progress, particularly in how we can help people from regional areas undertake placements closer to where they live. I think it is going to make a big difference for a lot of those people, particularly where we have people undertaking study in the South-East already. If we could help more of those people get their placements in the South-East, that would make a significant difference.

We are about to start and I can announce a new pilot program. This is something that has been worked on between SA Health and the office of nursing and midwifery, and also between UniSA, the Northern Adeliade Local Health Network, the Yorke and Northern Local Health Network and the Barossa Hills Fleurieu Local Health Network. I acknowledge it is not particularly in your area, but I am hoping that this will be a program that we can then expand to other regional areas across the state.

This program is going to provide up to 300 nurses the opportunity to get those placements within their locality. I am sure this will be particularly helpful for the member for Stuart, the member for Frome, the member for Schubert and other members and, of course, for many members in the northern suburbs as well, if we can make sure that we can get those placements closer to where people live in their local health network region rather than saying, 'You've got to go down to Flinders Medical Centre to do your placement.'

That is going to be significantly less of a burden for them. I think it will help to increase the number of people who complete their training, and ultimately we want to see more of those nurses complete that training to work in our regional hospitals, aged-care facilities, primary care and other places where we need nurses in regional South Australia. I understand we are about to brief the member and other members on this work and I am hopeful that that will pay some significant dividends.

As well as that, we are also working with the federal government who obviously have a significant role to play here when it comes to tertiary education. Between me and my colleague, the Minister for Education, we are raising this issue at the national level as well because we are hopeful that the federal government will see a role to play here in helping regional students undertake those important placements and providing them with support when they do come to the city as well.

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