Attracting more people to study nursing is crucial to help address the healthcare worker crisis in Australia, and new research is shedding light on how to make life easier for the students drawn to the profession.
New research from Edith Cowan University (ECU) reveals though nursing remains a predominantly female profession, the type of nursing student now entering university is vastly different from past years.
The average age of female nursing students in Australia is rising, which means more nursing students now have to balance their study with family responsibilities and other life commitments.
The Department of Education and Training estimate that more than half of current nursing students begin their degree after they’ve turned 20, with school leavers preferring other healthcare careers with higher pay and prestige, such as medicine, physiotherapy and occupational therapy.
Study lead Dr Lesley Andrew, a registered nurse herself and now a Senior Lecturer and Research Supervisor in in ECU’s School of Nursing and Midwifery, said the research indicated a student’s family needs regularly took precedence over university study.
These competing demands are ultimately leading to delays in graduating and, in some cases, needing to drop out, which means the impact is felt in hospitals and other healthcare settings as a lack of nurses.
“Our participants commonly prioritised family over university, which can impact participants' capacity to study and their personal wellbeing,” Dr Andrew said.
“It’s one thing to attract people to study nursing, but we have to make sure we keep them at university until they graduate.”
Gender roles: same as it ever was
The study’s participants were female undergraduate nursing students aged 23-48, who were all mothers of children aged under 18 living at home and who began their degree while in an intimate heterosexual relationship.
Nearly all described their family lives as having traditional gender roles, where women carry the domestic burden, such as childcare and housework, with men being the breadwinners.
This domestic arrangement continued for most participants once they began their degree —interestingly, many participants admitted to trying to maintain and protect these traditional roles.
“Many described their attempts to protect their partners and children from the ‘intrusion’ of university on the family and to continue to prioritise their family's needs over their own academic and carer ambition,” Dr Andrew said.
“This meant they rarely asked partners and children for help with domestic tasks; many recounted how they would forgo sleep and rest to ‘fit-in’ study.”
Dr Andrew said this stemmed from traditional ideas of motherhood forming such a large part of many of the participants’ identity prior to starting their degree.
“Over time, ‘shielding’ their family became more difficult as the expectations of university study competed for their time and energy,” she said.
“This created conflict for these women and led to feelings of guilt and distress, ultimately impacting their capacity to engage in the range of study opportunities offered by the university.”
Making things easier
With Health Workforce Australia estimating the nation will be short 123,000 nurses by 2030, Dr Andrew said it was critical nursing students were able to graduate university and enter the workforce.
To do so, this could include measures such as offering units online, providing the choice of full-time or part-time study, and trying to better support students with family responsibilities so they are able to attend workplace-based practicums.
Dr Andrew also said nursing degrees should incorporate gender studies so students would be better placed to embrace their university experience.
“Nurse education has changed in recent decades from a model where the student is a passive recipient of information, to a critical model where the student is engaged in the process of developing autonomy and empowerment,” Dr Andrew said.
“Embedding gender theory within nursing studies would allow women nursing students to be comfortable in enacting changes in their home lives to support studying their degrees, enrich the profession and protect the future workforce supply.”
‘Nursing students doing gender: Implications for higher education and the nursing profession’ was published in Nursing Inquiry.
Edith Cowan University authors on this study were Dr Lesley Andrew, Dr Ken Robinson, Dr Julie Dare, and Dr Leesa Costello.