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.
Getting on the Same Page: Why Australia Needs a National Maternity Early Warning System (MEWS) Chart
Briony A. Cutts, Lucy Bowyer, Nisha Khot, Sandra Lowe, Stefan C. Kane
Data for Equity: Can Linked Administrative Data Inform Pathways to More Equitable Child Health?
Sarah Gray, Shuaijun Guo, Meredith O'Connor, Elodie O'Connor, Katrina Williams, Hannah Badland, Susan Woolfenden, Josie Dickerson, Gerry Redmond, Marnie Downes, Sharon R. Goldfeld
Specialty College Selection: Why Change is Critical to Support a Future Rural Workforce
Matthew R. McGrail, Jenny May AM, Katherine Logan
The number of cancer‐related deaths that could be attributable to spatial disparities in survival in Australia, 2010–2019: a retrospective population‐based cohort study
Charlotte K Bainomugisa, Jessica Cameron, Paramita Dasgupta, Peter Baade
Differentiated and simplified oral HIV pre‐exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) models hold the key to virtually eliminating HIV transmission in Australia by 2030
Tyson Arapali, Sarah Warzywoda, Anthony K J Smith, Curtis Chan, Timothy R Broady, Erin Sullivan, Catherine MacPhail, Mohamed A Hammoud, Alexander Dowell‐Day, Benjamin R Bavinton
Non‐technical errors associated with deaths in surgical care, Australia, 2012–2019, by surgical specialty (Australian and New Zealand Audit of Surgical Mortality): a retrospective cohort study
Jesse Ey, Victoria Kollias, Octavia Lee, Kelly Hou, Matheesha Herath, John B North, Ellie Treloar, Suzanne Edwards, Martin Bruening, Adam J Wells, Guy J Maddern