Australia’s healthcare system is understaffed but female nursing students are facing increased barriers to graduation.
Why is this? According to new research out of Edith Cowan University, the average age of nursing students in Australia is rising and this predominantly female profession is having to navigate traditional gender roles that force them to balance familial duties on top of their rigorous study.
The Department of Education and Training estimates that more than half of current students begin their degree after they’ve turned 20 years of age and those that leave the profession seek healthcare careers with higher pay and prestige, such as medicine, physiotherapy and occupational therapy.
Juggling family commitments on top of university is leading many nursing students to either delay graduating or drop out of courses altogether and this lack of graduates is heavily impacting hospitals and healthcare settings already.
Health Workforce Australia estimates the nation will be short 123,000 nurses by 2030– an alarming amount.
Study lead Dr Lesley Andrew, a registered nurse herself and now a Senior Lecturer and Research Supervisor in ECU’s School of Nursing and Midwifery says, “Our participants commonly prioritised family over university, which can impact participants’ capacity to study and their personal wellbeing.”
“It’s one thing to attract people to study nursing, but we have to make sure we keep them at university until they graduate.”
The demographic of the study’s participants point to traditional gender roles largely contributing to the need for nursing students to delay or drop out of university altogether.
Participants were female undergraduate students aged 23-48. They had all begun their degree while in an intimate heterosexual relationship and were mothers of children under 18 years of age living at home.
Nearly all the participants reported carrying the domestic burden of childcare and housework, while their husbands were the breadwinners.
Researchers found it interesting that many participants admitted to trying to uphold these traditional gender roles.
Dr Andrews says: “Many described their attempts to protect their partners and children from the ‘intrusion’ of university on the family and to continue to prioritise their family’s needs over their own academic and career ambition.”
“This meant they rarely asked partners and children for help with domestic tasks; many recounted how they would forgo sleep and rest to ‘fit-in’ study.”
This attempt to uphold gender roles proved short-lived for many. However, as Dr Andrew says, over time the rigour of their studies and demands of traditional ideas of motherhood led them to feelings of guilt and distress, which ultimately impacted their capability to engage in university.
This problematic cycle shows a critical need for Australia to make life easier for nursing students to balance family and study.
Possible measures that use the information found in ECU’s research to help female nursing students could include offering university units online, providing the choice of full-time or part-time study and trying to better support students with family responsibilities so they’re able to attend workplace-based practicums.
Dr Andrews adds to these possible measures saying that: “Embedding gender theory within nursing studies would allow women nursing students to be comfortable in enacting changes in their home lives to support studying their degrees, enrich the profession and protect the future workforce supply.”