MACKAY Hospital and Health Service (HHS) has welcomed a strong intake of graduate registered nurses this year, including four new nurses for Proserpine Hospital.
The 79 newly qualified nurses have been recruited to the 2025 Mackay HHS Nursing and Midwifery Graduate Program.
This includes three midwives and 17 nurses undertaking rural placements in facilities at Proserpine, Clermont and Moranbah.
There are four nurse grads in total who have started at Proserpine Hospital – two started in December and two started in January.
The third and final cohort of graduates for 2025 completed their orientation at Mackay Base Hospital at the end of February.
One nurse grad has crossed ‘the ditch’ to gain new skills.
Nursing graduate Stef Wickes crossed the Tasman with a zest for adventure and desire to learn.
Originally from Greymouth on the South Island in New Zealand, Stef did her three-year nursing degree at the Ara Institute of Canterbury.
“At the start of my third year there was a lot of publicity about the lack of nursing jobs in New Zealand as the government had put a freeze on hiring staff,” she said.
“I was on my last placement in the Greymouth Hospital and my friend had got a job in Melbourne and I thought ‘I’ve always loved Queensland’ as I’d been to the Gold Coast on holidays.
“So I decided to apply for a post graduate program here in Queensland.”
The Mackay HHS recruitment team helped cement her decision to bravely ‘cross the ditch’ and work in Australia.
“We’re very lucky as New Zealanders that we’re treated as Australian citizens, essentially because of the Trans-Tasman agreement, which is amazing,” Stef said.
“The Mackay nursing recruitment team were just so lovely and really supportive.
“Yes, I wanted adventure and to expand my skills in a different community, but it was really their encouragement to come over, and how very easy it was to communicate with them and how responsive they were to emails and phone calls, which really sealed it for me.”
Stef has now completed her orientation and is looking forward to the challenge and ‘adrenalin’ of working in the emergency department at Mackay Base Hospital.
“So Mackay is quite a big hospital for me but I really liked that the health service here also offers rural hospitals as part of the graduate program,” she said.
“I’m from a rural town and that’s the aspect I like. My last placement was in the ED in Greymouth and I loved it – but there were only four nurses there and seven beds, so it’s going to be a very different experience here in Mackay.”
Stef is also hoping to spend some time in the health service’s rural hospitals.
“I love that in nursing you are building a rapport with your patients and you also get to see a lot of different stuff in the ED, so it’s all going to be a great experience for me,” she said.
“People really aren’t aware of the new grad program here in Australia and how it offers us the opportunity to get so much experience on the job but also experience a different country.”
For now, Stef is focused on finding her feet in nursing, gaining more skills and acclimatising to a new country.
