David Willis: Nurses' Society National Director on the expanded medical graduate bond scheme

The heath sector's welcoming more money in the pockets of new graduates. 

The Government's expanded the existing scheme giving graduates bond payments to stay in the country. 

Payments are up to $50 thousand over a period of three to five years. 

Nurses' Society National Director David Willis told Mike Hosking it's needed. 

Willis says it's designed to get workforce into hard-to-reach areas. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good news for a bunch of health graduates. So as
part of the bonding scheme, we've got nine hundred of
them getting anywhere between fourteen thousand and fifty thousand dollars
depending on what the job is. We're talking nurses, midwives,
anesthetic texts, rural gps, et cetera. Anyway, nurs Is Society
National director David Wills is with us. David, very good
morning to you, Kira. Broadly speaking, does bonding work well?

Speaker 2 (00:21):
That opening debate. I mean, it's never clear whether bonding
works or not. There is some evidence that with this
scheme retention rates are improved, but to some extent it
may well have been that people who enter it, because
it's a voluntary scheme, had every intention of remaining anyhow.

(00:43):
But that said, this expansion is welcome. It's for no
other reason than it's going to boost employment opportunities for
new graduates because at the moment there's not sufficient funding
available to with type budgets for tifutter or to hire
all the new graduates that would like to hire and

(01:04):
should hire. So this scheme gives a boost to the
hiring of new graduates. So in that sense it's welcome
and of course, it is designed to get people into
areas that are hard to fill, and if it does that,
they're those areas will welcome it.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
When you say areas, do we talk more about the
jobs or more about the locations of.

Speaker 2 (01:26):
The job, it's a bit of both. The scheme because
it's an expansion of an existing scheme and in the
past it's focused on filling some clinical areas which are
harder to get people into and arguably stay in, and
that's been primary care, age care and such like. But

(01:48):
it is also designed to help historically and ongoing with
filling vacancies in certain rural areas and other areas of
the country where it's proven to be more difficult. So
it's designed to do bogs.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
Yeah, interesting insight, all right, David, appreciate it very David Wills,
who's the Nurse's Society national director. I don't know where
the bonding works. If you if I mean my daughter's
a medical student, says I've told you a number of
times before. Much as far as I know, she's staying
in the country. So if she happens to be in
the specialist area where they go, hey, guess what you get.
You get fifty thousand dollars. She was staying anyway, so
that's a bonus for her and good luck to her.

(02:23):
But does it solve a problem given that she wasn't
going overseas? And would you for what? Fourteen grand v fifty?
What would it take for you to go? I'll probably
go overseas as a nurse. I'll hold on. Give me
twenty seven, give me thirty two, give me forty two,
and I'll stay. And how long does that last? Interesting? Eighth.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
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