Cabinet has approved the right sizing of Fiji’s nursing workforce.
This would see a gradual increase in the nursing establishment to improve the nurse to population ratio.
Cabinet based its decision on a submission by the Minister for Health, Dr Neil Sharma.
The Minister said that the continuous high and accelerating demand for health services at various facets of Fiji’s population places considerable pressure on the nursing fraternity to ensure that its workforce is in adequate supply to efficiently respond.
He said that the National Nursing Establishment has remained static for the last 15 years which makes it quite ill-responsive to the evolving development in health service and efficient delivery in the country.
He said that in the past three years, the Ministry of Health has continued to make considerable attempts towards right-sizing nursing workforce to provide and deliver quality health services and adequately meet the increasing unmet population health demands and health service needs of the country.
The Minister said that an increased nursing workforce will eventually mean a reduction in overtime, adequate staffing of new health facilities and a general improvement in health service delivery.
He said that Government is committed to improving the health sector, and this is a positive move towards achieving this goal.
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