Nursing teachers blame short-staffing on better frontline pay gap

Nursing teachers say their jobs are becoming increasingly difficult as they cope with bigger class sizes and a shortage of staff.

Their union says nurses are not taking up jobs as academics as often as they used to, because the pay isn't as good as frontline nursing roles.

Tui Smith, a Tertiary Education Union delegate and nursing lecturer, explained wages for nurse educators had not kept pace with that of frontline nurses.

"They're not moving from the profession to teaching in the way that they might have in the past."

Teachers developed and delivered lectures and tutorials, ran labs and simulations, marked assessments and provided clinical supervision and pastoral care, alongside research.

"These jobs used to be billed as family friendly," Smith said. Now, they faced increasing workloads due to rising enrolments and inadequate staff numbers.

Plus, a large number of nurses approaching retirement age would soon coincide with the increasing demands of an ageing population.

There was no shortage of prospective students. "We have applications coming out our ears," Smith said.

One of the country's bigger nursing schools, Otago Polytechnic, told RNZ it was short three fulltime staff out of 24. Another, Ara Institute of Canterbury, was short one teacher, having filled another position in recent weeks.

Last month, the Tertiary Education Commission wrote to nursing schools asking them to limit enrolments next year to 2025 levels, as there weren't enough student placements available in hospitals to accommodate more.

Smith said in some places every nurse had a nursing student with them, learning on the job.

"If we had more academic nursing staff, we could facilitate a wider range of clinical placement opportunities and stagger our intakes more to avoid such bottlenecks."

Greer Smit, a nursing lecturer at Ara Institute of Canterbury and a senior professional fellow in the University of Otago's nursing department, had recently published a masters thesis on the subject, drawing on the experiences of 15 other nurse lecturers.

In her own experience, classes 10 years ago were generally a manageable size, and there weren't too many lecturer vacancies.

But that had been changing in recent years. "Instead of teaching one to 20, we would have one to 30. Sometimes if a lecturer is called in sick, you would have one to 60," she said.

Her research found teachers were no longer getting to know the students as well as they used to. "We don't know their learning needs. We don't know what they don't know."

And large classes could make it difficult for students to ask for help. "They don't feel confident to speak up."

Dawn Blyth, co-chair of the Nurses Organisation's national student unit, said teachers off sick or unavailable occasionally meant their class of 20 to 30 was joined by another, meaning 60 to 100 students in the same session.

"Sometimes you don't have a chance to ask the questions that you might do in a smaller classroom ... you've got other noises going on ... if you're sitting at the back of the classroom, you don't always hear as clearly."

One-on-one time was not often possible. "[For] our practical skills, we often get broken down into smaller groups, but that is still anywhere between 12 to 15."

On placements, it was often challenging to find enough experienced nurses to teach students, she said.

In response to questions about how schools were maintaining standards, the Nursing Council said it took any concerns about the quality of nurse education seriously.

"Our role is to protect the health and safety of the public by setting and monitoring standards for nursing education and practice," it said in a statement.

Health NZ told RNZ it had support systems in place for graduate nurses to enable a smooth transition into the workforce and ongoing professional development.

There are more than 20 institutions providing nursing training around the country.

One of the key providers, Otago Polytechnic, told RNZ when fully staffed, it employed 24 full-time academics in the School of Nursing at its Dunedin campus.

It was currently advertising for three full-time nursing educator roles.

Associate Professor Hayden Croft, head of the health college, said despite recent vacancies, in 2025 it'd had a 99.5 percent retention rate for students in the Bachelor of Nursing programme, and a 98.4 percent completion rate.

Dr Claire Minton, head of nursing at Ara Institute of Canterbury, said the school was thinking carefully about recruiting and retaining teachers.

Recent hires meant its nursing leadership team was fully staffed, and it was seeing "strong interest" in current educator vacancies - it was currently interviewing for one role and another was filled in recent weeks.

Minton explained it could take several years for a nurse to become a teacher.

"Our well-established simulation facilities add another important dimension to that preparation, allowing students to develop and practice clinical skills, clinical reasoning and decision-making in realistic healthcare environments, complementing the experience they gain in real-world clinical settings," she said.