PeakTasmanian private healthcare and aged care providers say they are turning away dozens of applicants for each graduate nursing position.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Calvary Health Care Tasmania Launceston clinical services director Suezanne Horder said the organisation received 90 resumes for eight positions for the 2012 intake.
Aged and Community Services Tasmania chief executive officer Darren Mathewson said his group received about 80 expressions of interest for the 30 positions it had on offer this year.
The Health Department sent out its first round of letters of offer to 111 graduate nurses earlier this week, but it has been met with anger by the Australian Nurses Federation, which says it does not go far enough to help the more than 300 finishing their studies.
Federation state secretary Neroli Ellis said the limited numbers in the private sector did not help the graduates who needed to consolidate their knowledge in a supported program before moving to practice.
''The DHHS has a policy that new graduates cannot be employed until they have completed six months of a graduate program, which renders these new nursing graduates without access to a program, unemployable in nursing,'' Mrs Ellis said.
She said research indicates that all graduates needed to be employed to meet the expected exodus of baby boomer nurses over the next few years.
Both the Calvary and the aged care group said they expected to take a similar number of graduates in 2013, but Calvary may offer a mid-year intake for the first time next year.
Ms Horder said as a large organisation, it could also highlight positions at their other facilities in the state to applicants not successful the first time.
Mr Mathewson said as they have more than 50 member organisations, there was a variety of positions and it retained many of the graduates year to year because of this.
Health Minister Michelle O'Byrne has said the positions so far offered, exceeded its initial estimate last year of 98 and was in line with the number of positions previously offered before 2009.