Medical workforce - towards 2025

Doctors training now will have a very different world of practice. They will need to understand team care, patient engagement in decision making and clinician leadership as well as the rapidly changing health system. But what an exciting environment to be entering, with all the advances in care available and expanding into the future — as long as we can afford them.

Bruce G Robinson MD, MSc, FRACP · Peter M Brooks MD, FRACP, FRCP(Glas)

Summary Key trends in Australian medical workforce supply include increasing overall supply levels and an increasing number of medical graduates, but also reduced workforce effort and a large cohort of doctors approaching traditional retirement age. Although prevocational and vocational training programs are beginning to expand, there are significant bottlenecks in the postgraduate training pathway for the sizeable cohorts of new graduates. The ...

Catherine M Joyce BA(Hons), MPsych, PhD

Summary Health Workforce Australia (HWA) was established by the Council of Australian Governments through its 2008 National Partnership Agreement on Hospital and Health Workforce Reform, as the national agency to progress health workforce reform and address the challenges of providing a skilled, innovative and flexible health workforce in Australia. The Australian Health Ministers’ Conference commissioned HWA to undertake a workforce planning exercise for doctors, ...

Maureen V McCarty MBA · Bethany J Fenech BEc

Summary Adequate health workforce alone will not ensure optimal health service access. We consider what an effective and sustainable health system for rural and remote Australia might look like in 2025, briefly describe some of the barriers to achieving this vision and propose how these challenges may be overcome. More radical change is required on at least four fronts: changing the ...

John Wakerman MTH, FAFPHM, FACRRM · John S Humphreys BA, DipEd, PhD

Despite goals for self-sufficiency, migration seems certain to remain an imperative for Australia for the foreseeable futureAustralia has developed extraordinary reliance on international medical graduates (IMGs) compared with other OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries. Based on analysis of an unprecedented range of secondary data, I aim to define the recent scale and sources of medical migration, IMGs’ immigration categories, their distribution, their ...

Lesleyanne Hawthorne PhD, MA, BA(Hons)

Summary Health systems with strong primary care orientations are known to be associated with improved equity, better access for patients to appropriate services at lower costs, and improved population health. Team-based models of primary care have emerged in response to health system challenges due to complex patient profiles, patient expectations and health system demands. Successful team-based models of primary care require a ...

Lucio Naccarella BSc(Hons), GradDipTranscultural MentalHlth, PhD · Louise N Greenstock BSc(Hons), PGCertSS, PhD · Peter M Brooks AM, MD, FRACP

Technological approaches and increased use of simulation are elements of a more comprehensive solution to creating a fit-for-purpose medical workforceAustralia is undergoing considerable change in management of its health care systems. This is driven by the increase in complexity of patient illnesses and the public’s higher expectations of having access to safe, high-quality health care. Central to the success of Australia’s future health care systems ...

Marcus O Watson BSc(Hons), MSc, PhD · Brian C Jolly BSc(Hons), MA(Ed), PhD

Payment systems should be considered more often as a policy intervention to improve health system performancePayment and funding are often regarded as administrative transfers; and yet, funding is rarely provided without strings attached. Where funding and remuneration are made conditional on certain behaviours (eg, working a set number of hours, seeing a certain number of patients, undertaking specific tasks or tasks of a certain standard, ...

Anthony Scott BA(Hons), MSc, PhD

Reforms underway in New Zealand are designed to significantly increase workforce productivityIt is true that most ill and injured New Zealanders currently receive appropriate and timely health care, but viewed as a whole, and considering health outcomes in Maori and poorer urban and rural communities,1,2 the New Zealand health system is something of a “curate’s egg”. I suggest that the New Zealand health workforce is ...

Des F Gorman MBChB, MD, PhD