Wairarapa has had interest from British health sector workers. PHOTO/GETTY IMAGES
HELEN HOLT
[email protected]
More than 50 medical workers from the United Kingdom and Ireland have expressed interest in working in Wairarapa.
Wairarapa was one of six Central DHBs to remotely exhibit at four job fairs in UK and Ireland, in an attempt to recruit medical staff.
From the job fairs, 51 expressions of interest were referred to Wairarapa DHB.
This was one of the DHB’s efforts to mass recruit much-needed workers into the overrun health sector.
Interim district manager Dale Oliff did not disclose how many expressions had turned into contracts, saying there was a gap between expression of interest and making decisions to move to New Zealand.
“There can be a significant lag time between someone expressing an interest in working for us and them making decisions about moving to Aotearoa, and going through the immigration and registration processes before actually starting work.”
Oliff said HealthNZ was supporting initiatives to boost Wairarapa’s workforce, including making it easier for workers to move to New Zealand.
“This includes facilitating a number of health workers through immigration for employment across the specialties, including doctors, nurses, allied health and midwifery.”
“Health NZ is also now an accredited employer on the Immigration website, so now we can facilitate bringing people through.
“We are also in the process of setting up a national service which will be locally delivered, to help healthcare workers and their families, meet immigration requirements. This is already operational and will be scaled up as we recruit more people to support the service.”
As well as the job fairs, DHB was involved in national recruitment campaigns, including workforce pipeline strategies and the critical nurse campaign
The director of nursing was working with UCOL to restart the enrolled nurse training programme in Wairarapa.
“We have also put in place a role focused on recruitment to support managers and the organisation.
“We remain committed to recruiting to and filling vacancies as soon as possible, and will continue to look at all avenues for achieving this.”
