The heads of some of Australia’s nursing schools have dismissed as ineffective a proposal to introduce mandatory enrolment targets for rural students.

Professor Karen Francis from Charles Sturt University said increasing the rural student intake would have little impact on Australia's overall rural and remote nursing workforce. She said recruitment and retention of graduates was the real issue, not a lack of supply of trained nurses. Francis said about 85 to 90 per cent of students enrolled in rural nursing schools were local rural students but after graduation up to half of that cohort were lost to jobs in the city. A recent rural health strategy released by the National Rural Students' Health Network called for a minimum of 33 per cent of...