Nursing and Midwifery Exchange Program

The state-wide Nursing and Midwifery Exchange Program (NMEP) provides opportunities for nurses and midwives to experience new practice environments within a supportive mentoring framework. The program aims to strengthen capacity of rural and remote services, and clinical specialties, by increasing the skills and experiences of existing staff and attracting new nurses and midwives. This will in turn increase the ability of services to support the transition of additional nursing and midwifery graduates, essential to sustaining these workforces into the future.

The NMEP provides opportunities for second year graduates and experienced nurses to increase their skills, competence and professional networks. The exchange program format sees a transfer of clinical knowledge and experience, within a buddy / mentoring framework. It is envisaged that the exchange program will see increased skills and understanding between the different settings.

This program is open to Queensland Health nurses and midwives who meet the eligibility criteria.

Now it’s your turn to challenge yourself — apply today

View program guidelines

Application Form

Contact us

Email: nmep@health.qld.gov.au

What participants say about NMEP

Pilot exchange

View transcript

Nursing and Midwifery Exchange Program pilot - video transcript

My name is Donna Rixon. I have joined the Nurses and Midwifery Exchange Program for Queensland. It has been a wonderful opportunity to come out into a rural setting to experience life as a rural nurse and to allow a rural nurse to come into metropolitan to experience my normal setting.

Carly Clunes registered nurse St George Hospital: I just wanted larger hospital experience. I’ve only worked rurally and so small town, small hospitals, and I just wanted to upskill and see what metro hospitals are all about. At St George Hospital we might see up to thirty patients a day which can be busy for a team of three nurses, but for Logan Hospital you might see up to three hundred patients a day. So just managing the workload, time management skills. And also caring for patients who are more acute. At St George we only care for patients up to a certain point before we have to fly them out with RFDS. Whereas Logan has the capacity to care for more acute patients.

Geoff Rixon registered nurse Logan Hospital: The benefits that I have gained personally, professionally from this have been immense. And the development that I have achieved in my learning and my experience of this entire environment has been absolutely wonderful. Very rewarding and would love to do it again.

Carly Clunes: As I have only worked rurally I wasn’t sure how I would handle nursing in a larger hospital but it’s made me realise that I can look after many patients at a time who are very unwell and just learning new skills that I can take back to St George with me. That I can educate the younger workforce, yeah. Probably career-wise as well, it’s made me realise that I do need the larger hospital experience and that I do love working in the emergency department. Would be good to think about for the future.

Donna Rixon: It has enhanced my nursing skills and refreshed some old skills that I had forgotten about. Haven’t worked on a ward for many years having mostly in the last 10-15 years worked in the emergency department. So it has been most enjoyable to look after from antenatal mothers in hospital through to nursing them post-delivery through to nursing elderly people in the last stages of their life.

Carly Clunes: It’s such like a low risk opportunity. It’s only for three months, so if you didn’t like it you can go back home. You learn so much in that three months and it’s such a good experience.

Geoff Rixon: I would encourage anybody to come on board and participate in this.

Donna Rixon: I would highly recommend anyone that is interested to give it a go.

Tessa and Georgie

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Nursing and Midwifery Exchange Program Tessa and Georgie - video transcript

Georgie Blain, registered nurse Weipa Hospital. So the nurse exchange program is about a three month program where a rural nurse will swap with a tertiary facility nurse. We swap jobs for the three months.

Tessa Rowe registered nurse Cairns Hospital. I heard about the nursing exchange program here in Cairns actually through a friend of mine who told me about it. So I decided to apply because I’m hoping to work in Far North Queensland in the remote islands in the Torres Strait in the future.

Georgie Blain: I’ve done rural remote nursing for my last three years that I’ve been a nurse. I haven’t work in a tertiary facility before so I thought it would be a great opportunity to be able to see both sides of nursing. When I’m up in Weipa it’s a smaller town we send a lot of our sick patients out. They generally come down to Cairns to get after care so it’s great to see the other side of nursing and to actually look after them in that aspect and learn what they do down here.

Tessa Rowe: I had a really good time. It gave me a better understanding of the challenges faced with rural and remote nursing and the challenges faced by the patients there as well. We see a lot patients who come to Cairns from these remote places so it’s good to have their background, to see where they came from. Also from a nursing side of things, the staff there were wonderful. They had a really broad scope of practice. Did all sorts of things that I hadn’t seen here or in my past nursing, so a really good experience.

Georgie Blain: It’s improved my skills that I have immensely. Given me more confidence. Just networking it’s been great.

Tessa Rowe: Definitely a very positive outcome for me. Three months you know it’s a really good amount of time. We’re really well supported throughout the program. You know they support us financially as well as you know checking in making sure everything was going well. So it’s not too long of a time but long enough to really get a feel for it.

Georgie Blain: I’ll go back up to Weipa and then hopefully do some in-services up there and try implement some of the things I’ve learnt down here up to that hospital.

Tessa Rowe: I think just the work that the nurses do up there and the doctors and the way they work as a team was really good. It was really good to see how well supported they are even though they’re in such a remote place, with nowhere near as many facilities as what we have here in Cairns. They do such an amazing job. I think yeah it’s just a real positive one.

Georgie Blain: Definitely. I’d 100, 100 per cent recommend the nursing exchange program.

Tessa Rowe: I had a good time, I had a really good time. Definitely go back, yep.