Graduate programs

Our program offers a structured learning environment to help build your skills and develop your nursing career. As a nursing graduate, you’ll benefit from working in a supportive environment that offers:

  • mentoring and preceptor support
  • clinical coaching from nurse educators, clinical facilitators and coordinators
  • opportunities to consolidate learning in both ward and emergency environments
  • career and personal development opportunities.

Read our graduate nurse fact sheet [PDF 354.61 KB] and graduate services fact sheet [PDF 623.16 KB] to learn more about the program.

Unleash your potential with our graduate nursing programs

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Our graduate program is highly sought after by graduating students from university. Applications come from far and wide, and we're given the great privilege of being able to choose the best of the best.

[Allison, Nurse Manager, Pathway to Excellence]

Our current graduate program is over a 12-month period. It incorporates several study days that build capacity and capability but also emotional intelligence and personal growth and development as well. I think the beauty of this program actually creates staff that are able to have succession into different roles, new roles, leadership roles as well.

[Riannon, Clinical Facilitator MAPU]

I started my career as a grad in a medical unit I worked there for a year and then I transitioned to IDI. I completed the Emergency transitions program which allowed me to work in all areas of the IDI, including resource and triage.

[Nicole, Registered Nurse, Healthy Hearing]

I started here at Logan in 2016 as a graduate and rotated through all the areas of maternity. Since that time, I've been able to have secondments to both the birth suite and the community midwifery service where we visit women at home, which has been fabulous, and in the last 18 months I've been working part-time as the Healthy Hearing coordinator for Logan Hospital.

[Kathy, Nursing Director, Emergency Department]

The grads who come to our department bring a wealth of knowledge of their own learnings, their life learnings as well, not just their clinical learnings. They come here with new fresh eyes and enthusiasm which invigorates the entire department.

[Lorraine Stevenson, Director Nursing and Midwifery Services]

They remind us about contemporary practice.

[Allison, Nurse Manager, Pathway to Excellence]

Graduates are placed in a lovely opportunity for change.

[Nicole, Nurse Educator, Simulation]

They’re change agents and we give them the capability and ability to see it through to the end. This means that we are going to retain them, and they can make a difference.

[Muireann, Nurse Unit Manager, Emergency Department]

With the support of the grad program there are high quality clinicians that we’re very happy to have on our team. We also find it a good resource for us as clinicians to be able to have an education team to contact.

[Margaret, Midwifery Unit Manager]

I think what's important too, as well, is it actually helps grow our midwives here because they're involved in those programs too and growing that next group of midwives coming through too.

[Kirstin, Registered Nurse, Perioperative Service]

Being a part of the graduate program and having the opportunity to be part of the quality and issue program has been an incredible opportunity and it's opened ourselves to other possibilities and to make a really big change within the hospital and the environment as a whole.

[Eden, Registered Nurse, Perioperative Services]

Even though we are just grads, we can make a big difference in this hospital and we're trying to tackle the way that our hospital manages waste and trying to become more sustainable.

[Margaret, Midwifery Unit Manager]

The thing I particularly value is the insight program that helps a portion of that work where they get involved in really genuine discussions around how we do our work and how we can do it better. It also increases their capacity to think about themselves as leaders of the future.

[Lorraine Stevenson, Director Nursing and Midwifery Services]

I really like to see the graduates grow and develop over the year. I really value the place they hold in our organization and the gifts that they bring us.

[Alicia, Nurse Unit Manager, Perioperative Services]

It's hard to put a graduate’s success down to one thing because each grad comes with a totally new set of skills and they then become the next level mentors and preceptors taking our nursing culture into the future.

[Riannon, Clinical Facilitator MAPU]

In my graduate year I learned to be comfortable with the uncomfortable and take every opportunity that comes my way.

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Clinical areas

You'll have the opportunity to work in both the general ward and the emergency department during your graduate year.

Open day

We host an open day each year for graduate candidates where you can learn more about our hospital and what it’s like to work with us.

Contact us

Email MS_NM_Graduate_Support@health.qld.gov.au if you have questions about the program.

How to apply

Apply for the Registered Nursing and Midwifery Graduate Program on the Queensland Health careers website.

Last updated: August 2024