Ramsay Health Care hires 550 nurses to combat Covid-fuelled shortages

Ramsay Health Care has revealed its plans to try to overcome a worldwide shortage of nurses, and will try to recruit 550 graduate nurses next month.

Ramsay Health Care nurses Elise Jenkins (left) and Renee Davis (right) have been treating Covid-19 patients in Dubbo, NSW. Picture: Nat Salloum

Australia’s biggest private hospital operator, Ramsay Health Care, will recruit 550 graduate nurses next month – its highest intake ever – in effort to combat chronic labour shortages.

The Covid-19 pandemic, now in its third year, has exacerbated a national nurse shortage, which is expected to widen to 85,000 by 2025, according to a federal government report.

It comes as private hospitals have been forced to delay elective surgeries, their main revenue driver, during the pandemic, with Ramsay taking a $70m hit last financial year. Staff shortages limit the ability for private operators to rebound to full capacity.

Carmel Monaghan, chief executive of Ramsay’s Australian operations, said its workforce was its “most significant challenge”.

“Like all industries, we see the workforce as our most significant challenge for the next few years. Supply has been constrained with borders closed and staff furloughed due to Covid,” Ms Monaghan said.

“A small percentage of staff did not get vaccinated under the vaccine mandate and have left the industry. So this creates added pressure right across the health industry, including aged care.”

While elective surgery in NSW has returned to full capacity, the Victorian government announced a return to restrictions late on Wednesday to limit the spread of rising Covid-19 cases from the Omicron variant.

Ramsay’s first-quarter earnings before interest and tax fell 27.8 per cent to $197.4m, according to unaudited accounts. The company said its Australian earnings were hit by elective surgery restrictions, isolation orders and lockdowns in Greater Sydney and Western Australia.

Analysts said workforce retention was critical for Ramsay’s Australian and global operations, particularly as demand for health services increased and elective surgeries resumed.

“The only common themes we saw in the volatility across Ramsay’s three major jurisdictions in 1Q22 were record demand and exhausted clinical workforces struggling to satisfy it,” Wilsons analysts Shane Storey and Melissa Benson said in a note to investors late last year.

“There is clearly a multiyear workforce renewal piece that will play out from here, post-pandemic, which may change the economics of delivering hospital care in a structural way.”

Ms Mongahan said nursing had “changed forever” via the public and private sectors working more closely.

“We have come together like never before, and this has provided nurses with more opportunities and more diversity.

“They can be employed by private hospitals but Covid has provided opportunities to work in remote locations, in vaccination hubs, in aged care. That has created wonderful, diverse experiences for our nurses.”

It is this opportunity Ramsay – which employs more than 77,000 people across Australia, Europe, the UK and Asia – is hoping to tap in its efforts to attract new talent.

It will hire 550 graduates in February, a 25 per cent increase on 2021’s intake. It also plans to work more closely with educational institutions to attract more students into nursing courses. At the onset of the pandemic, The World Health Organisation estimated six million more nurses were needed to achieve global targets. Pre-Covid, Health Workforce Australia forecast 85,000 more nurses were needed in Australia by 2025 and 123,000 by 2030.

“We are also exploring how we can work better with TAFEs on enrolled nurse (ENs) placement and training and this will be a focus in 2022. We’ve also increased educational support for new grads as they transition into the workforce,” Ms Monaghan said. “We have a buddy system in place so there is a preceptor to check in on the graduates’ wellbeing and progress.”

The focus on nursing has risen to the executive leadership of Ramsay’s Australian operations, with the company hiring Bernadette Eather as chief nurse and clinical services director.

“Berni is a strong nurse leader with a long and respected career. She has not only expertly run Ramsay’s Covid response but, at the same time, has been focused on developing a new suite of nurse programs,” Ms Monaghan said.

“We have invested in our nurse leaders with a new leadership program focused on our unit managers and directors of nursing. As the stewards of the hospital, we deem them our most critical workforce so investment in this workforce and creating career pathways for them will be key to our future success.”

Last year, Ramsay began dispatching more than 400 nurses across regional NSW, from Broken Hill and Wilcannia to Dubbo and beyond, in an effort to hoist the state’s double vaccination rate above 90 per cent.

For nurse Elise Jenkins, it meant she travelled 800km northwest of Sydney to Bourke.

“The work here has been so varied. I’ve been in the Covid ward, acute care, the emergency department and assisting with aged care,” Ms Jenkins said. “That’s rural nursing, you do everything.”

As a global provider, Ramsay has seen how quickly Covid can overwhelm ICUs and wards.

“We’re a scientific organisation, we’re medical, and we also have global experience. I know what’s happening in England. We don’t want that,” Ms Monaghan said. “Vaccinations have proven to be effective, so we need to get onto it quickly.”

Ramsay has also helped set up vaccination hub efforts in Cairns, the Sunshine Coast, and Gold Coast. More than 200 staff have been deployed into these centres.

But Ms Monaghan said more could have been deployed. “In the initial expression of interest, we had over 500 sign-ups and we still have teams on standby to assist in the regional areas as required.”