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PhD student focuses on retaining nurses
A Business student at the University of the Sunshine Coast is conducting research that could help overcome the anticipated critical shortage of nurses across Australia.
While Federal Treasurer Wayne Swan in his Budget speech this week promised more funding to train new nurses, PhD student Lee-anne Bye is looking at how hospitals can better retain their experienced nurses.
Lee-anne, 48, of Palmwoods, is doing her thesis on “The impact of relationships, networks and exchanges (social capital) on the retention of mature age nurses in hospital settings”.
She said two-thirds of the nation’s nurses were “Baby Boomers”, so it was important to address their specific job satisfaction needs to keep nursing numbers up.
Lee-anne said her interest in the shortage of nurses in hospitals stemmed from her undergraduate study in Community Work at USC more than a decade ago.
“When I did my undergraduate degree, I looked at the ageing of the general population and the shortage in the labour force that it was predicted to cause,” she said.
“I found nursing interesting because there was not only a shortage of labour but an increased demand for nurses forecast.
“We now can’t get enough new nurses in quick enough, and there’s also the issue of experienced nurses not staying on long enough.”
Lee-anne is one of three PhD students who received $2,500 scholarships from the combined Rotary clubs of the Sunshine Coast during a Rotary celebration at USC on Wednesday 12 May.
The Rotary clubs annually provide scholarships to one student from each of USC’s three faculties to support students progressing from undergraduate to postgraduate studies at the University.
The other students who received Rotary scholarships were Scott Taylor of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and Roslyn Clapperton of the Faculty of Science, Health and Education.
Scott is researching society’s resistance to dolphin-assisted therapy for children with special needs, with his thesis: “Of Babies and Bathwater: The contested spaces of dolphin-assisted therapy”.
Roslyn, who graduated with a Bachelor of Science (Sport and Exercise Science) degree with a perfect grade point average of 7 in 2008, is researching “The impact of acute and chronic changes in blood flow on calf muscle endurance, fatigue and capillary density in older adults with and without peripheral arterial disease."
— Terry Walsh