Abstract
Rural nursing practice settings are wide and varied in New Zealand from remote isolated islands to secondary rural hospitals. No studies have been undertaken to describe the geographic distribution of the entire New Zealand rural nursing workforce. Impacts of evolving rural health systems and health policies has seen much change for rural nursing. Describing nurse's workplace settings accurately as rural or urban is another way of describing this specialty. This study employed a cross-sectional descriptive design to describe the geographic distribution and demographic characteristics of the NZ nursing workforce using routinely collected registration data from the Nursing Council of New Zealand. Utilising a new geographic classification tool (GCH-Geographic Classification for Health) nurses employment addresses were geocoded against this tool to describe if they were rural or urban.
The final sample size was 17,826 (28.59%). 44,516 (71.4%) of nurses had to be excluded due to inaccurate employment addresses. 91% of the final sample were based in an urban setting with 9.8% in rural areas. Rural nurses were usually older and had practised for longer. Māori nurses were based in more rural areas. There was more Nurse Practitioners per 100,00 population in rural than urban. Developing a consistent way of defining where a nurse is employed is an important step in understanding the demographics and distribution of the whole of the New Zealand rural nursing workforce. Obtaining information about the rural Nursing workforce is an important part of ensuring rural areas have equitable access to health care professionals.