❓ Mr Norberger asks the Minister for Health for an update on the registration of UK and South African qualified nurses. The Minister outlines steps taken to address the issue and ongoing efforts to consider overseas nurses' experience for registration.
AnsweredQoN 806Legislative Assembly
QuestionView source ↗
NURSES — OVERSEAS-QUALIFIED —
REGISTRATION
806. Mr J. NORBERGER to the Minister for
Health:
Before I ask my question I would
like to quickly acknowledge the principal, the deputy and the student leaders
from Maida Vale Primary School in the Speaker's gallery today and wish
them all the best from the member for Forrestfield.
I understand the minister has stepped
in to try to find a solution to the situation facing United Kingdom and South
African qualified nurses who have been prevented from working as registered
nurses in Australia. Can he update the house on his progress?
REGISTRATION
806. Mr J. NORBERGER to the Minister for
Health:
Before I ask my question I would
like to quickly acknowledge the principal, the deputy and the student leaders
from Maida Vale Primary School in the Speaker's gallery today and wish
them all the best from the member for Forrestfield.
I understand the minister has stepped
in to try to find a solution to the situation facing United Kingdom and South
African qualified nurses who have been prevented from working as registered
nurses in Australia. Can he update the house on his progress?
AnswerView source ↗
Before I answer that question, I
need to apologise to the wonderful students up the back, whom I should have
named before Mandurah Primary School, which is just down the road, got in.
Glencoe Primary School, from my electorate, is clearly much more organised
because those children got the top seat! Well done guys.
This is an important issue. It is in
relation to new rules set by the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia
around qualifications required by nurses to work in Australia. Many nurses who
graduated a long time ago, particularly from the UK and South Africa, have a
nursing diploma, but now in Australia a person needs a tertiary degree to
become a registered nurse. The nurses' board took the view that the
legislation requires the board to employ only those from overseas who have
tertiary qualifications, so the board made that change. Prior to making that
change, a whole lot of nurses with a vast amount of experience had moved their
families and everything to Australia, but were unable to be registered as a nurse
without jumping through a huge lot of hoops, including doing further studies
and sitting examinations. I raised this issue last year. I asked all those in
Western Australia to let me know whether they were involved in this so that I
could try to help them. I ended up getting letters from all over Australia—nearly
70 letters altogether—asking whether I could do something. We wrote to
the nurses' board and got it to make some changes, which included
organising the registration of all those in the cut-off time, so that their
problem was sorted out.
As members know, I was in hospital
recently and one of the nurses looking after me was from South Africa. She was
extremely well qualified as a coronary care nurse. Luckily, she came here three
or four years ago, but if she were to come here now, she could not be
registered. I raised this with the other ministers at the health minister's
meeting recently and we agreed that we would get the Australian Prudential
Regulation Authority to have further discussions with the nurses' board
to get it to take into consideration the experience of overseas nurses in
working out whether they should be registered. That way, experienced nurses in
areas of shortage, not just the main area but in the coronary care unit, the
intensive care unit, and in theatre—nurses who might have done 20 or 30
years overseas—will be able to come here and be registered to work in
Western Australia.
need to apologise to the wonderful students up the back, whom I should have
named before Mandurah Primary School, which is just down the road, got in.
Glencoe Primary School, from my electorate, is clearly much more organised
because those children got the top seat! Well done guys.
This is an important issue. It is in
relation to new rules set by the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia
around qualifications required by nurses to work in Australia. Many nurses who
graduated a long time ago, particularly from the UK and South Africa, have a
nursing diploma, but now in Australia a person needs a tertiary degree to
become a registered nurse. The nurses' board took the view that the
legislation requires the board to employ only those from overseas who have
tertiary qualifications, so the board made that change. Prior to making that
change, a whole lot of nurses with a vast amount of experience had moved their
families and everything to Australia, but were unable to be registered as a nurse
without jumping through a huge lot of hoops, including doing further studies
and sitting examinations. I raised this issue last year. I asked all those in
Western Australia to let me know whether they were involved in this so that I
could try to help them. I ended up getting letters from all over Australia—nearly
70 letters altogether—asking whether I could do something. We wrote to
the nurses' board and got it to make some changes, which included
organising the registration of all those in the cut-off time, so that their
problem was sorted out.
As members know, I was in hospital
recently and one of the nurses looking after me was from South Africa. She was
extremely well qualified as a coronary care nurse. Luckily, she came here three
or four years ago, but if she were to come here now, she could not be
registered. I raised this with the other ministers at the health minister's
meeting recently and we agreed that we would get the Australian Prudential
Regulation Authority to have further discussions with the nurses' board
to get it to take into consideration the experience of overseas nurses in
working out whether they should be registered. That way, experienced nurses in
areas of shortage, not just the main area but in the coronary care unit, the
intensive care unit, and in theatre—nurses who might have done 20 or 30
years overseas—will be able to come here and be registered to work in
Western Australia.
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