Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Students push rural health work

Avatar photo
Nursing students joined medical students late last year on a tour designed to promote rural health careers to pupils in rural schools.
Reading Time: 2 minutes

Third-year Wellington nursing students Rachael Rowe, Lagisi Wirangi, Katrin Scott, Laura Winter and Mickey Walker took part in a five-day trip through Wairarapa and Central Hawke’s Bay to Napier and back to encourage country children to consider medical and health careers.

It was the first time nursing students took part in the tour, Whitireia Polytech nursing programme manager Leanne Pool said.

“It was a fantastic opportunity for our students to promote nursing as a career choice to young people.”

Medical students have been touring rural schools for about 10 years to encourage young people to become rural health professionals and Rural General Practice Network rural health careers programme manager Ester Maxim said nursing students were included in the latest tour to promote rural nursing careers and to strengthen the relationship between the network and Whitireia, which has a range of nurse training courses.

“Young people are a lot better at engaging with other young people. They understand the challenges or confusion school students often face in terms of choosing a career so that is why we chose tertiary students to visit the rural schools to encourage the pupils to complete their secondary education and hopefully pursue one of the many rewarding careers in rural health,” she said.

“Statistics suggest that the most effective time to talk to kids about their career options is prior to year 10.”

Wirangi said “I’ve known that I wanted to be a nurse since I was 14 years old. My grandmother was sick so I spent a lot of time with her in the hospital and in that time I saw first hand how truly important nurses are.”

Maxim said the shortage of nurses in rural areas is similar to that of GPs and it is vital to include all professions that are in short supply in initiatives such as the rural schools tour.

Many nurses, who might have come from rural areas, choose to work in urban areas because that is where they trained, met spouses and bought houses so often they do not go back to their rural home towns.

“Luckily, there are a number of training institutions close to rural areas where these young rural people can train and then return as qualified professionals to their hometowns and whanau. 

“It is extremely important for them to be trained to serve their communities appropriately – this may be in traditional Maori techniques and protocol, managing those with mental health and wellbeing issues and understanding emergency medicine for those in very remote and hard-to-reach places.”

Nurses are increasingly recognised as being the ones who work at the coalface, who know the people in the community and what is happening in their towns, Maxim said. 

“Nurses can be trained in a wide variety of disciplines such as maternity, nurse practitioner and geriatric so the potential to grow a very robust and diverse nurse workforce in rural communities is huge.”

Two more tours of rural schools to promote careers in rural health are planned for late June and early November this year.

Total
0
Shares
People are also reading