Employers must re-engage with their ageing workforce as the nursing shortage worsens, research finds.

Retaining older employees needs to be given more prominence in government initiatives, according to a new study looking at Australia’s ageing nursing workforce.

The workforce shortage is well documented with many strategies suggested to resolve the issue. This includes increasing migration or training places, changing skill mix or nurses’ roles and greater use of unregulated or unlicensed workers.

However, a factor given relatively little prominence in the debate is methods of retaining older employees who, in most developed countries, form a substantial and growing component of the workforce, said the study appearing in the Australian Health Review.

“As the generation of baby boomers are now reaching retirement age, the number of workers leaving the workplace will increase over the next 20 years,” said the authors Elizabeth Graham and Christine Duffield, from the Centre for Health Management, UTS.

From 2003 to 2007 the proportion of nurses aged 50 years and over increased from 28 per cent to 33 per cent, according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.

As nursing is physically and emotionally demanding, an understanding of the effects of ageing on the ability of older nurses to continue working is needed in developing a retention policy.

Overseas research indicates that there are several measures to assist retaining older nurses, including flexible working options that don’t adversely affect pension and superannuation provisions and a job redesign to address the issues of heavy workload and stress.

Some have suggested that specific roles focusing on aspects of work such as admission and discharge processes could be developed for older nurses. However, the study found few reports of such strategies being successfully implemented.

There has been little research conducted in Australia focusing on older nurses, other than to highlight that it is a problem.

Tags: Workforce mature age workers