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Fiji will recruit 170 nurses per year over the next three years to be able to meet its health care demands.
This means that all nursing graduates from the Fiji School of Nursing and the TISI Sangam Private Nursing School in Labasa will be guaranteed jobs in the health service from next year.
“That would mean around 120 nurses from FSN and 50 from the Sangam School,” said Ministry of Health Media Liaison Officer Iliesa Tora.
He said FSN is expected to graduate 95 nurses by February 2010 with 58 from the TISI Sangam School of Nursing.
“There is a need to retain the existing 1811 positions with an immediate filling of the 153 nursing vacancies and an overall increase of 510 additional posts to total 2321, as the Revised National Nursing Establishment for the country from 2010 to 2012,” said Tora.
Cabinet had agreed to expand the nursing establishment after approving the Nursing Workforce Review Recommendations in April.
A total of 104 registered nurses had retired in April this year at the reduction of the retirement age to 55 years, with only 30 approved for re-engagement.
This put more pressure on the nursing workforce, which already had 153 vacancies.
Tora said that over the years, the approved nursing establishment had remained at 1811, with only 72 new nursing positions created in the last 10 years.
He said nurse are retiring, upon reaching 55 years of age, at an average of six per month and almost 60 nurses leave the service annually for different reasons.
The increasing population plus the fact that there have been a lot of nurses retiring over the years has further compounded the problem, he said.
Tora said that the healthcare needs of Fiji’s population have dramatically changed with the emergence of new diseases (NCD, HIV/AIDS and cancer) and the re-emergence of the old public health diseases such as typhoid, leptospirosis and TB.
