Would-be nurses miss out on uni places, Labor says

The Federal Opposition says thousands of students are missing out on nursing degrees because the Government has not funded enough university places.

Labor's education spokeswoman Jenny Macklin says some universities are reporting strong demand for nursing places that they are unable to meet.

Ms Macklin says one university in Sydney received more than 3,000 for about 560 places.

She says the nation is suffering from a critical shortage of nurses.

"It's an ageing profession, there's already a shortage of nurses and unless we substantially increase the number of places to educate more nurses we're going to have a bigger crisis in the future," she said.

"We need to act right now to take more students into our universities, students who want to be nurses, [to] educate them so that we can get them into our hospitals."

By Sick 4 February 05