NT Nurses “Population Turnover” Study Seminar

Last Friday Professor Stephen Garnett and Dr Kate Golebiowska presented some of the findings from a year long study into the causes and consequences of population turnover among Northern Territory nurses. The study was funded by the NT Department of Health and Community Services, and the work team included people from the Department, Charles Darwin Uni, NT Treasury and assistance in data preparation from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. It was a very broad ranging piece of research looking at why nurses come, why they leave, why they might stay, and how much staff turnover costs. Detailed results will be released over the next few weeks. I don;t want to steal the thunder of the various reports – but I will give two highlights from the research that have already made it to various radio and television news items.

One of the interesting findings was that staff turnover had decreased in the past ten years or so. The research was able to look into this in more detail and found that what had actually happened was that fewer people stayed a very short period of time. It seems that people were generally staying long enough to at least work out their initial short term (one or two years) contracts, then leaving. At the other end of the service scale, there appeared to be a cohort of older nurses who were leaving the profession due to retirement. The image below shows the percentage of nurses still in the NT after a period of time.

Another thing that was interesting was the length of time that nurses thought it took to become ‘work ready’ or ‘fully productive’ when they started work in the NT. Nearly half said they were ready to go straight away, while a third said it took them six months or so. Nurse managers tended to think that nurses underestimated the length of time it took them to get up to speed, and there were definite groups who seemed to take longer. Overseas trained nurses, and particularly those not trained in English, took longer. So did nurses working in more remote areas. Nurses who had worked in the NT previously did not need as much time to get up to speed.

The study has provided a range of insights into social and professional reasons for coming to and leaving the NT. Greg Rickard from the Department of Health and Community Services told the audience that they were considering a range of recommendations from the research, and would provide a full report in the near future.

From our point of view, this has been valuable collaborative research demonstrating that we can not only gather data, but make it meaningful to our research funders and partners. Thanks to Stephen for coordinating the project so effectively.