Rural practice has distinctive challenges for nurses who make up the largest and best distributed rural and remote health workforce in Australia; nurses outnumber doctors 8: 1 in these areas in 2003/2004. 1, 2 New graduate registered nurses face significant challenges when commencing in rural/remote settings, particularly if they have not been exposed to rural/remote life. New graduate registered nurse turnover in some areas of Australia is between 20% and 50% in major centres and up to 86% in rural and remote areas. 3 Success internationally in retaining new graduate registered nurses has been reported through a structured new graduate program, which ran over two years (6% turnover rate in 2003 from a previous high of 34% in 1998). 4 A number of Australian studies have looked at new graduate needs within the workplace; however, none used structured focus groups to obtain data for analysis.