Volume 184 - Issue 11
Health Workforce Innovation Conference
Author: Peter M Brooks
Med J Aust 2006; 184 (11): 590-591. || doi: 10.5694/j.1326-5377.2006.tb00398.x
Published online: 5 June 2006
Published online: 5 June 2006
In reply: Deacon has unfortunately missed the whole point of the Health Workforce Innovation Conference. It was about innovation — new ways of doing things. It was also about health, not medicine — a concept that some doctors might find difficult to accept, but is actually the reality. Deacon seems to suggest that we still need to debate whether there is an “inadequate number of doctors in Australia” — surely most of us have moved on from there. One of the consequences of the “rather illogical proposal to greatly expand the nurses’ scope of practice” might be to retain nurses in the workforce. This, as most of us know, is a major issue.
The Health Workforce Innovation Conference was not necessarily about saving costs; it was about producing a more effective health system and trying to provide for those who cannot access services because they are not available or there are long waiting lists for procedures that could well be done by other health professionals.
A number of papers presented at the conference demonstrated that care could be provided by groups such as nurse practitioners or physician assistants without any reduction in quality, and it behoves Deacon (whom I assume is a believer in evidence-based practice) to present data to the contrary if he wishes to make those assertions. Deacon commented from the floor on a number of occasions, making the assertions that we would expect from an organisation which is dedicated to maintaining the status quo.