SA’s biggest private hospital is facing a shortage of experienced nurses when it opens next year
THE new $300 million Calvary Adelaide Hospital due to open in mid-2019 faces a shortage of experienced nurses as factors including an ageing workforce start to bite across Australia.
CALVARY is preparing to open the biggest private hospital built in South Australia - but faces a shortage of experienced nurses to staff it.
The $300 million, 343-bed Calvary Adelaide Hospital being built in Angas St is on track to open mid-next year and officials are urgently trying to recruit experienced nurses to work there.
Calvary now has 15 key nurse vacancies but hospital general manager Juanita Ielasi said when they move from Wakefield St to the new hospital they expect to need an additional 50 nurses in the first year to meet growing demand.
She said a national nurse shortage across Australia has been predicted for several years, and may have been mitigated by the Global Financial Crisis forcing some nurses to delay retirement.
“One factor in the shortage is it is an ageing workforce - the average age of nurses across our organisation is 45 so there is a big volume in their older years,” she said.
“It is also a profession where a lot of young workers will move around, going interstate and overseas early in their careers although they may come back later.
“You also get a lot of people going part time as they have families, which means you need more people in your organisation.”
Ms Ielasi said the main shortage is in experienced nurses, particularly specialist theatre nurses for surgery.
Calvary employs 1700 staff across its four SA hospitals - in Wakefield St, North Adelaide, Walkerville and Elizabeth Vale - and normally takes two intakes of graduate nurses a year but it is moving to three.
Ms Ielasi noted the not-for-profit Catholic health care group has a range of measures in place in workplace conditions aimed at retaining staff, and the organisation is holding a Careers Expo in their Wakefield St auditorium from midday on November 13, children welcome.
