A group within the Ministry of Health has paid district health boards to provide jobs for all new graduate doctors while hundreds of new nurses struggle to find work, according to a nurses union.
The Government said last week that all 377 New Zealand medical graduates have got work in hospitals this year, despite places for newly graduating doctors and nurses being particularly tight in public hospitals according to Radio New Zealand's health correspondent.
The Nurses Organisation's Hilary Graham-Smith, says she understands some hospitals were paid to fit the doctors in, while hundreds of new graduate nurses are still looking for work and face having to go overseas.
She says the union was told there were jobs for 353 new doctors, and that the Health Workforce New Zealand group in the ministry paid district health boards to fit in the extra 24, which she says is unsustainable, and a sign of poor workforce planning.