Any nurses, med students, physios or social workers who’ve had this experience?

I don’t understand why nursing and midwifery students aren’t paid like apprentices when on placement. Good for students & patient safety.

Yes. It means working night shifts, weekends, struggling to find childcare, living on the bare minimum. Studying in between.Yet an engineer or business intern gets paid for placement.... Future frontline workers are behind the 8 ball before we even start.

My daughter just finished a social work degree and that involved 1000hrs of unpaid placement. She was lucky to have parents who could support her. Where does it leave rural students or single parents etc ?

Every semester was a desperate scramble to stockpile enough money (while also studying full time) to pay the rent during the unpaid placements. Eighty hour weeks were routine. Totally screwed system, broken by design.

It's hard for mature age students too who work full-time and have to complete these placement subjects.

100% I trained as a pharmacist and a dentist... particularly as a dentist I felt you couldn't complete the course without serious financial backing even with HECS. The future health professionals of tomorrow need to live!

Unpaid placements are wage theft. No worker should be performing unpaid work in the 21st century.

I did this while studying pharmacy, 12 hour shifts on weekends while on placement to make sure I could pay my rent. I'm grateful we have shorter placements and a paid internship year, not that the award rate for an intern is brilliant though!

The entirety of healthcare is predicated on this sort of goodwill, Senator. That it has increasingly been taken for granted, after the impact of #COVID19 on workers, in the midst of a cost of living & housing crisis, and with rising job insecurity and worsening administrative

I would pull 14 hour shifts whenever I was on placement - start at 7am at one hospital on placement, then drive to another hospital for paid work until 9pm. Rinse and repeat for 4 weeks! That was 15 years ago, I would hate to think about how much tighter money would be today!