Unpaid placements bring financial stress and anxiety.
Getting financial support during clinical placements “would make the world of difference” to third-year student nurse Victoria Robinson.
“It takes a lot of mental energy to prepare for placements, partly because I have to build up enough savings to cover the periods we are not permitted to earn any income,” said Victoria, 21, who is studying at University of Technology, Sydney.
“It would help a lot if I knew I was going to be financially viable during placements.”
She has no carer responsibilities “but I don’t live with my family, so I’ve got to meet rent every week plus utilities and groceries – and the cost of everything keeps going up.”
She works as an AiN but is required to take a minimum 10-hour break between the end of any work shift and the start of a placement shift.
That rules out paid work during placements, which for Victoria this year will add up to around 500 hours (including placement time carried over from 2023).
“Placement is not only a financial stressor, it is also a very big mental stress,” she said.
“Nurses have to take on a lot of responsibility and a big emotional load. If you’re employed as an RN or AiN and have a really bad day at work, you can somehow justify it by telling yourself you can at least pay for this week’s groceries.
“ You can’t do that with unpaid placements.
“If you let anxiety about your financial circumstances weigh you down too much, it starts impacting on your placement experience.
“I’ve heard of people doing night shift to fund themselves, and then passing out from exhaustion during placement the next day.
“If that happened you could fail your placement, or it might be cancelled. The hours that you completed would not count and you would have to do another placement to make up for it.
“You could potentially fail a subject as a result.”
Victoria did not realise the full extent of costs involved in getting a nursing degree before starting her studies.
“In first year, I had to pay for textbooks, student services and amenities fees, nursing shoes, and equipment such as a stethoscope and fob watch – and then I had to fund myself during placements and pay for petrol to get to them.
“I knew placement would be tough, but I didn’t realise how tough until I got into it. The dropout rate during and soon after the very first placement of three weeks was enormous.”
Victoria said nursing students in regional and rural areas are particularly hard hit by costs associated with placements.
She did her first year at Charles Sturt University in Port Macquarie, where most placements were more than 90 minutes drive from home.
“I knew a student in Port Macquarie who was given a placement in Dubbo, about 600 kilometres from home.”