Agenda

• Resolving priority health workforce issues - key areas staked for reform
• Recommendations on workforce policy from the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission
• Examining current national activities to tackle these priorities
• Engaging AHMAC and peak health groups to coordinate the reform approach

• Improving health facilities to promote recruitment and retention
• Consolidating complex services to improve the safety of work practices
• Increasing the teaching capacity for health professionals within our public health system
• Creating new roles to meet demand
• Relieving pressure through initiative such as GP Plus Health Care Centres and out-of-hospital strategies

• Examining "Leading the Way" - Tasmania's health workforce strategy
• Encouraging lean thinking in clinical operation
• Expanding the roles of health professionals and support workers
• Reviewing the nursing career structure
• Promoting leadership and initiative

• Encouraging interprofessional collaboration in healthcare delivery and education
• Developing cooperative and multi-disciplinary ways of working
• Grounding learning and practice in patient centred principles

• Examining the progress of the Jurisdictional Workforce Planners Group
• Facilitating information exchange between jurisdictions
• Standardising workforce information
• Promoting consistency in workforce planning methodologies

• Reforming health education pathways to provide sufficient trained graduates to meet demand
• Training multi-skilled health graduates
• Challenges faced in creating curricula and professional accreditation of condensed health courses
• Developing a workforce capable of responding to a complex health system

Learning and Teaching for Interprofessional Practice, Australia (LTIPP, Aus), was an ambitious project, co-managed by The University of Sydney and the University of Technology Sydney, and funded by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council. Its aim was to explore what would be required to increase the capacity of the Australian higher education sector to graduate health professionals with interprofessional learning and interprofessional practice capabilities. The project identified four interrelated developments critical to the achievement of this national goal. The presentation will report on these findings.

• Examining the national supply and demand model
• Supply and demand projections - global and by speciality
• Workforce demand and supply workload measures
• National health workforce research collaboration

• Working with national workforce projections and research
• Integrated service and workforce planning in the clinical environment
• Turning data into information (internal trends plus external supply and demand)
• The models of care approach to workforce planning
• Actioning a workforce plan

• Understanding differences in PHC workforce planning
• What makes for effective PHC workforce planning?
• Addressing principles that can guide PHC workforce planning
• What data (medical & non-medical) is needed to inform PHC workforce planning?
• Exploring the policy levers which exist for PHC workforce planning?

Lean principles are being increasingly used to improve the efficiency of health care processes and environments. This workshop will develop an understanding of the background, principles and tools of Lean management and how they can be deployed in a health workplace – freeing time for patient care. The session will draw upon practical examples from the birthplace of Lean – the manufacturing sector and demonstrate how these principles have been successfully incorporated in government, healthcare and health insurance settings.

An Intergovernmental Agreement on the Australian health workforce was signed by COAG in March 2008 to establish a single national registration and accreditation system for health professionals. This system will oversee ten health professions: chiropractors, dental care practitioners, medical practitioners, nurses and midwives, optometrists, osteopaths, pharmacists, physiotherapists, podiatrists and psychologists. This session will explore progress towards this initiative.

• Examining current shortcomings to systems for clinical education and governance
• Building positive and proactive attitudes in clinical staff
• Promoting an emphasis on patient safety
• Encouraging competency based rather than time based assessment

• Current moves toward International Medical Graduate Assessment reform
• The role of foreign doctors in meeting shortfalls in the GP workforce
• Challenges and successes faced in stakeholder engagement and coordination
• Overcoming barriers to implementation of reforms

• Considering an alternative model of primary health care extending beyond the general practitioner
• Challenges to delivering comprehensive, patient-centred primary care in a multidisciplinary
• Developing inter-professional education pathways and promoting consistency of curricula between health professions
• Promoting principles of equity, empowerment, and collaboration
• Ensuring that accreditation standards reflect efficiency, effectiveness and competency

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) were engaged by the National Health Workforce Taskforce to conduct an analysis of the Physician workforce in Australia and produce workforce supply and demand projections over the next 25 years. This presentation outlines the data and approaches used to perform the analysis, provides a snapshot of the current profile of Physicians in Australia and a summary of projections by sub-specialty and location

• Promoting staff experience, skills, capacity and leadership
• Reforming ward organisation, ward measurement (KPI’s), visual management and standardized flexibility
• Improving assessment evaluation, care goals & plans, care delivery and discharge
• Developing hospital wards that are patient focused, driven by information and organised for safety

• Understanding the characteristics and drivers of connected and collaborative leadership
• Recruiting and developing networked professionals to meet contemporary healthcare challenges
• Using the connected leadership model in workforce planning

• Separating role profiles into culture and management competencies
• Understanding the characteristics that give candidates the capability to perform a management or leadership role
• Assessing, identifying gaps and providing targeted mentoring and training

• Engaging young people to enter into rural health careers
• Exploring current initiatives for training health professionals in a rural context
• Overcoming shortfalls in the rural health workforce

• The Mental Health Workforce Advisory Committee (MHWAC) – current progress towards a national approach to mental health workforce development
• Exploring bottlenecks to workforce supply and challenges to workforce development
• Examining the progress of current priority workforce activities:
  • The Mental Health Nurse Education Taskforce
  • Mental Health Professional Online Development (MHPOD)