Investing in our Medical Workforce

1
Investing in our Medical Workforce

• Professor Judy Searle
• Principal Medical Adviser, Workforce, Education
  Training
• Health Workforce Division
• Australian Government, Department of Health
  Ageing

2
Commonwealth and COAG initiatives

• National Registration and Accreditation
• Health Workforce Australia
• 09/010 Commonwealth Government Budget measures
  consolidated specialist training, medical school
  support, research, scholarship scaling
• Bradley report implications for health
  educators
• DoHA restructure Health Workforce Division
• National Committees MTRP, EMEAC

3
Where we begin

• Med Ed 2005 and 2007 recommendations
• Commonwealth CMO advice re a meeting NOW
• The environment today
• Health Reform
• Health Reform
• Health Reform
• The realities of our current workforce
• The biggest barrier to health reform is workforce

4
Stock take!

• March 2005 Canberra 8 recommendations
• Establish a national health care education
  council v
• Define competencies and curriculum content for
  different stages of medical education v
• Review clinical teaching and learning v
• Review use of potential teaching environments v
• Marry medical education with other health
  workforce needs
• Ensure that the wider health sector recognises
  that education and research are intrinsic to
  health service planning and delivery
• Provide a more rational and transitional process
  for career development/change
• Define good medical practice v v

5

• April 2007 Melbourne 7 recommendations
• Improving the education and training continuum
• Challenges to Clinical Education v
• Professionalism, Accreditation and Registration
  vv
• How education can contribute to the alleviation
  of workforce mal-distribution geographical and
  discipline
• Optimising stakeholder interaction and placing
  medical education on the national agenda v
• Supporting doctors to become effective health
  care team members
• Developing longer term educational innovations

6
Where we begin

• Med Ed 2005 and 2007 recommendations
• Commonwealth CMO advice re a meeting NOW
• The environment today
• Health Reform
• Health Reform
• Health Reform
• The realities of our current workforce
• The biggest barrier to health reform is workforce

7
Medical practitioners

• In 2007 there were 77,193 registered
• 87 were employed in Australia
• almost one quarter (23.5) received their first
  medical qualification overseas

8
Medical labour force

• Has steadily increased over the last five years
• employed increased by 11,000 or almost 20
• rose in proportion to the population from 279 to
  305 FTE per 100,000

9
Distribution of medical practitioners

• Marked variation across states and remoteness
• number employed in Remote/Very remote areas
  increased by 25 in last five years
• those in Regional areas decreased slightly

10
Medical workforce pipeline
11
Health workforce planning not a science

• Supply and Demand (Segal and Bolton, 2009)
• Growth in health workforce over 3 per annum
  faster than pop growth of 1.2-1.5 2000- 8 (ABS
  2007)
• Workforce highly influenced by policy drivers
  national and local
• Pop ageing and ageing of the health workforce
  will NOT be a dominant influence
• Demand is more complex - ? wealth, new
  technologies, changing diseases profiles, health
  prevention etc

12
How will we get there?

• From benchmarking/learning from others
• Professor Sir John Tooke
• From asking the right questions
• 3 conference themes

13
Themes for 2009

• Increasing health workforce flexibility Andrew
  Singer and Michael Hensley
• Achieving vertical integration Peter White
• Building Training Capacity Neville Yeomans and
  Kevin Forsyth

14
How will we get there cont.

• From our collective expertise
• Selected audience
• Panel discussions
• Break out discussions
• Compulsory networking
• events!

15
How will we know when we are there?

• Session 6
• Follow up recommendation development and
  stakeholder endorsement
• Action plan
• More ticks at the 2011 conference
• A well planned, well managed, well
  distributed, high quality and happy medical
  workforce

16
Thank you