The Report of the Survey of 2009 BSc Nursing Graduates (ONMSD 2010) was published in Dec 2010 by the Office of the Nursing and Midwifery Services Director.

The overarching purpose of the survey was to gain a better understanding of employment trends and practice issues of newly qualified nurses entering the workforce. This survey is similar to that conducted among 2007 and 2008 nursing graduates, the results of which are included in this report to provide a comparison.

The report provides information from these graduates about their experience seeking work, initial and current employment status, and initial nursing practice experience.

Survey highlights

The overall survey findings are encouraging and the survey response rate was good, at 47 per cent (668). The plan is to continue to repeat the survey in subsequent years, to compare data and to identify trends over time.

Almost every graduate respondent (98 per cent) began initial employment as a registered nurse after graduation and at the time of the survey, the majority (97 per cent) reported current employment as a registered nurse. Some 53 per cent of respondents reported that it took less than four weeks for them to obtain initial work as a nurse.

Other findings show that of the 482 initially employed in the Republic of Ireland:

 Conclusions and recommendations

The survey provides an employment profile of 47 percent of 2009 graduates from BSc undergraduate education programmes in nursing within the Republic of Ireland and so it is valuable from a service planning perspective. It is anticipated that the conclusions and recommendations contained within the report will facilitate the ongoing development of nursing and midwifery pre-registration education programmes, ensuring that these programmes are continuously updated to reflect evolving health service requirements and related changes in nursing and midwifery practice.