Australia has just introduced a payment for eligible students doing unpaid placements, including nursing, midwifery, teaching and social work. Photo: 123RF
Student nurses and midwives say they are taking on the same workload as qualified staff in order to fill gaps in the sector, and they are doing it all for free.
It comes as nurses, midwives and other healthcare staff around the country prepare to take strike action over what they say is a failure by Health NZ to address their staffing concerns.
Australia has just introduced a payment for eligible students doing unpaid placements, including nursing, midwifery, teaching and social work.
The latest New Zealand Nurses Organisation student survey found finances were a significant issue for over 80 percent of respondents, along with 60 percent who said they had to significantly reduce their paid work hours during placement.
Many students said a similar system should be introduced here to support them through their studies.
Maisy Holzer is in the second year of her midwifery degree at Ara Institute of Canterbury.
She said the three year degree has four years worth of content squeezed into it, making for a busy load of hands-on work placements, assignments and tests.
By this point, over 20 percent of her cohort has either taken a break from the course or dropped out.
"It's quite tricky, we have assignments that go through the entire year, for example I'm working a 42 hour week on placement next week and I've got a 2000 word assignment due the monday after. So it's tricky to find that balance, for sure."
Over the three years midwifery students must complete 2400 hours of practical placements, or 54 weeks full time.
In her first year of study Holzer managed to occasionally work a casual job to bring in a little extra cash on top of her student allowance.
But she said between the workload, mental load and placements she had to quit, something that had made her already stretched budget even tighter.
"Things like petrol, you're driving home after a night shift and going I don't get paid for a couple of days but my gas light's on am I gonna make it home in time?
"Things like food, trying to make sure you're still eating well but it becomes trickier. If you've had a really busy week and you've had to pay for parking heaps. It becomes a real strain and you have to budget really really meticulously."
Holzer said part of the degree requirement was a rural placement, most often completed out of the region, meaning the majority of students would have to relocate and self-fund their travel and accommodation fees, adding to the financial strain.
Sana Ahmed is in her final year of a three year nursing degree at the University of Waikato.
In six months, at just 20 years old, she would be a qualified nurse.
But she said carrying the strain of full-time clinical placements, patient care, strict assignment deadlines and a weekend part-time job often made her feel like she was missing out on her twenties, rarely finding a moment for herself.
"When I do like eight-hour shifts, that's expected from me each day, I come home, I'm so exhausted but I still have to open my laptop and finish on those assignments or prepare for assessments."
As she reached the end of her degree, Ahmed was preparing for the final 10 week stretch of clinical placement.
Unlike the previous 28 weeks, she had already completed, this time she'll be rostered anytime between Monday and Sunday, including late nights, leaving no time for her part-time job.
"I knew nursing would be intense, I knew it required a lot, but I didn't expect it to be this difficult... people say it's a tough degree but I didn't realise how much we were expected to carry without proper support.
"I thought there would be more financial support, or at least some form of compensation during the placement."
Ahmed said by the time she reached her second year of study she already felt like she was taking on the same workload and pressures as a fully trained nurse.
"We're expected to arrive on time, we're expected to attend those meetings early in the morning in each ward, we're expected to do handovers, we're expected to take over the patient load, so pretty much we're doing what is expected of the nurses."
Organiser of Paid Placements Aoteroa Bex Howells delivered a petition to parliament in May last year calling for a stipend for all students undertaking unpaid placements.
And despite the petition gathering more than 16,000 signatures, she said they were no closer to a solution.
"[The government] acknowledges that we have a workforce shortage and we need to do something about it, they need to support people into these professions and that Australia has recently introduced paid training, and that the European Union has voted to ban unpaid placements on the grounds that they're exploitative.
"But [the government] is not going to do anything about this because it's not an immediate solution to staffing crisis that have been decades in the making."
NZ Nurses Organisation Kaiwhakahaere Kerri Nuku said there were still significant deficits in the nursing workforce numbers which contributed to the demand on students.
"It's a bigger systemic problem, many schools of nursing are trying to ensure clinical placements for students don't encounter those types of pressures, but it's really difficult to achieve that when the system itself is clogged up, under pressure and overloaded."
Checkpoint has approached Health NZ Te Whatu Ora for comment.
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