The number of graduate nurses joining South Australia's hospitals will double next year, according to a $25 million plan announced by the state government.
SA Health Minister Chris Picton said the number of graduate nurses entering a three-year traineeship with SA Health will jump from 600 to 1,200.
Mr Picton said the initiative would reduce burn-out experienced by nurses under significant pressure.
He said that having more nurses coming in means we can fill shifts, reduce our use of casual and agency nurses, reduce the number of people who are having to do double shifts, and reduce the pressure on our nurses, which is why they're more likely to stay and want to be part of SA Health in the long term.
The Chief Nurse and Midwifery Officer, Professor Jenny Hurley, said a key component of the initiative was support and supervision for nurses entering the profession.
She said that it is important to have a sustainable workforce for the future and that we need to keep our nurses and midwives in the future.
She said that the announcement was encouraging, and that you need a lot of support when you're a grad nurse.
It's very confronting at times, especially when you're working in high acuity areas like ED or ICU.
That's why having someone to mentor you through while you're still developing and consolidating your clinical skills is encouraging. Health spokeswoman Ashton Hurn said that attracting and retaining nurses was one of the most significant challenges in healthcare.
She said the state needed to do everything possible to keep South Australia in the race with states such as Victoria and New South Wales offering financial incentives for nursing students.
She said it is enormously competitive at the national level.
The South Australian opposition released a report card into the Labor government's first six months in office.
The opposition leader David Speirs said the government promised to solve ramping in a heartbeat but in July a total of 3,647 hours were lost to ramping, down from the record high of 3,854 hours in June.
She said South Australians were spending hours on the ramps because of a government that spent months and months before the election, and that they are certainly not meeting the pace, according to the Opposition health spokeswoman Ashton Hurn.
Health Minister Chris Picton said the state's ramping issue was exacerbated by COVID and flu cases, as well as deferred care and lack of primary care.
He said we haven't put in place all of the additional measures yet that we are putting in place additional nurses, additional beds, hospital upgrades and additional nurses to address the fact that very clearly people aren't getting the care they need and our hospitals are under significant pressure.
We were very clear that this is going to take years to address.