Page 562 - Week 02 - Thursday, 24 March 2022
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These additional staff will bolster the territory’s workforce and provide high quality care across the health system. Recruitment of our health professional workforce is integral to our health services. That is why we have been absolutely committed to bringing on board more health professionals.
Our health services are constantly changing, with rapid developments in new technology and more sophisticated and effective interventions and models of care. We know that our region is growing and changing, which is why we are ensuring that every opportunity is taken to support our health workers now and to prepare for our future workforce needs.
Of the commitment we made to employing 400 new health professionals, the ACT government has already funded 257 full-time equivalent positions in the 2021-22 budget. We fulfilled over half of our commitment in one budget, delivering an important boost to our health workforce that we will continue to build on through this term of government. So far, our health services have recruited more than 170 of the funded FTE in this financial year, up to February 2022. That means more staff on the ground to support our community and one another.
Our investments in the 2021-22 budget include more services at Calvary Public Hospital Bruce, one of which is the commencement of 24/7 medical imaging, with more allied health, nursing and support staff. This service started on 31 January 2022 and is increasing patient access to medical imaging and decreasing staff fatigue, with more health professionals joining the service.
The 2021-22 budget also invested in even more capacity for both of our emergency departments, including new models of care and positions to better support Canberrans when they need to attend the emergency department. At Canberra Hospital, significant recruitment has been underway and we have reached some of the highest levels of medical officer coverage in the ED at the Canberra Hospital in many years.
Some of the changes in the way the ED operates and its interaction with the rest of the hospital will take time to embed and mature, and this is compounded by very high presentations across both EDs in recent weeks. But with more staff and a real commitment to change, I am confident that we will see improvements, not for the sake of the numbers but because those numbers are people and we want to ensure that patients are safe and improve their experience in accessing emergency care.
To support our health workforce during the pandemic, there has been significant and ongoing recruitment occurring across our health system. There have been high numbers of health workers needing to quarantine over this pandemic, and that has been the case for workforces across the country.
The government has worked hard to make agile changes to respond to the pandemic’s impact on our public health workforce, with a number of initiatives being progressed, including more than 750 nurses and midwives recruited in this financial year; junior medical officer and nursing graduate intakes brought forward to join our teams early; more new graduates recruited than ever before; the introduction of a health student workforce to our testing and vaccination services; and stronger health and wellbeing support programs to support both managers and teams through this difficult time.
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