Last modified 01/26/2024

Job opportunities for nurses in Australia:

Nursing is one of the professions lacked in Australia, which has generated it to be reported as with great demand in the Skill Occupation List (SOL), which can be accessed through the Skilled Migration Program, as long as the age, profession, experience and command of the English language requirements are fulfilled, and a minimum score of 120 points, shown in the Skilled Migration Program, is reached.

In many countries, nursery or nursing is not an appreciated or well paid profession, but in Australia, this profession is very appreciated by the Australian community, due to the knowledge and skills developed by those who practice it and that allow, not only saving lives, but also taking care of children, grownups and elders.

In Australia, the need for nursery professionals has a wide work market in the different public and private hospitals, in both, its general services as well as in the specialized ones; and, at the same time, nurses are required in jobs related to health promotion, which allows the existence of a salary structure that does not have anything to envy to one offered in other professions.

In Australia, there are two was of acquiring the nursing profession. One is obtained through having studied through a Technical and Further Education, also known as TAFE, and then have practiced in a hospital as an apprentice in a period of twelve months, after that, the title of Enrolled Nurse is obtained. An Institute of TAFE, is a state educational center in which courses that have been accredited by the Australian Government are been taught and which are accepted in any Australian university as coursed maters that have already been studied to obtain a university diploma.

Another of the ways is having coursed a fulltime course during three years in the University of Australia and obtaining a Registered Nurse degree. Here, a fundamental requirement is having concluded the baccalaureate and having the corresponding certificates. Just in some exceptional cases, people are allowed to course studies without this requirement; however it is demanded in other elemental conditions.

Once any nursery titles had been obtained, which could be as an Enrolled Nurse or Registered Nurse, you can enroll yourself in different fields to take care of people, such as:
Care of pregnant women, before and after they have given birth.
Care of premature children
Care of sick newborns
Care of people that suffer from cancer
Care of people that have mental issues
Care of people that are in intensive care
Care in the emergency room

Besides you can develop other specializations such as:
Health promotion
Assistant in surgical interventions

In rural and remote zones, their presence might even constitute the difference between the life or the death of a person.

This is a very encouraging view for any nursing professional who wishes to immigrate to Australia, especially when we find out that since April of 2008 there has been an alert that indicates that there is a lack of 13 000 nurses, a situation that will become even more serious because 20 % of the nurses that are in activity are about to retire, because they have more than 55 years old, which has been stated by the General Director of Catholic Health in Australia, information that has been corroborated by the Australian Institute of Health Workers, who indicate that they pretend to delay the retirements of more  than 90 000 nurses, damaging, with that, the quality of the health public services.

While this tendency was previously discovered in the study “Repercussion of the lack versus the immigration of nurses as a global phenomenon” by Graciela Arroyo de Cordero and Juana Jiménez Sánchez, who indicate that for the year 2010, Australia will have a deficit of approximately 40 000 nurses per year. Meaning that the job opportunities for this profession are greater each year.

To practice the nursing profession, the immigrant must be registered in the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Council (ANMC), who is in charge of revalidating the professional titles that, in some states, only require theoretical and practical tests. In others, they facilitate the access of nurses who come from the European Union, as long as they prove that they have a high command of the English language (the IELTS exam is applied with a minimum average score of 7 out of 10 points and that the score in the reading and listening activities in English cannot be less than 6.5 out of 10 points).

Those who usually recruit, are the states and territories for their Public Health Departments, for which we must look in their web sites, in which they state their nurse requirements, salaries, work schedules and other job conditions, just like it is indicated by the Government of New South Wales in www.health.nsw.gov.au/nursing/

The profession of nursery is found among the most demanded profession according to the Skill Occupation List (SOL). Let’s not leave aside that nurses can access the permanent residency visas through the Skilled Migration Program, whose requirements, as we already know, involve been less than 45 years old, having work experience in the nursery field, having a good command of the English language according to the IELTS qualifications and that the fulfillment of these requirements allow him or her to access to a minimum score of 120 points in the system.

Let’s remember that the skilled visas are processes through the Adelaide Skilled Processing Center, located in the city of Adelaide.

Summing up, the ones who demand the nursery professionals the most are the health care departments of the different Australian states and territories.