Page 628 - Week 03 - Thursday, 15 March 2007
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are making the investments, targeting the professions where we can offer more support, and ensuring that the ACT is an attractive place to come and work. Hopefully, once they have made that decision, they will stay here.
MR GENTLEMAN: Mr Speaker, I have a supplementary question. Minister, what contribution has capital investment played in addressing our work force needs?
MS GALLAGHER: There are two very good examples of where the ACT government has provided a capital investment to support our future work force needs across the health system. The first one is the ANU medical school, where we provided just over $12 million for the building at TCH and just under $2 million to refurbish an area at Calvary Hospital to ensure that we are in a position to start exporting doctors in the next couple of years. Members will be well aware of the role of the medical school.
More recently, we provided $10 million to the University of Canberra in its allied health school building. I opened this just last month. This is the culmination of I think a three-year collaborative partnership between the University of Canberra and the ACT government. It was pretty much a complete refurbishment of the old school of health sciences building and included additions to that school. They are now able to offer students a centre of excellence so that they can come and learn in the ACT. Hopefully, they will then choose to work in the ACT.
The new building has a 220-person lecture theatre. It has disability access. It has lecture tables for left-hand writers. We also have put in a gait analysis track for rehabilitation of patients. So students can learn to use that. There is specialist equipment for the school and skill laboratories for the pharmacy students. For the physiotherapy students there are a couple of pretty much fully equipped hospital wards fully oxygenated, with all the tubes and everything you would see in a hospital ward. Those students have access to this. When they go on work experience, they will know what it is like to work in a hospital setting.
This has allowed for a total reorganisation of the school of health sciences. This will focus on dietetics, pharmacy and physiotherapy. They have already had the master’s graduate. I think the first graduate was in 2005. Fifty per cent of graduates from that program have gained employment in the ACT region, whether through ACT Health or other private providers.
We also look at other smaller programs in terms of supporting and looking after our staff. It is not just about students. For example, I recently went to the hospital and looked at the 65 hoists that we have installed across certain clinical areas of the hospital to reduce manual handling injuries of staff. We are already seeing very big reductions in manual handling injuries of wardspeople and nurses, largely related to lifting patients into or out of bed. These hoists assist with that. In the last figures I saw there was I think a 40 per cent reduction in work force injuries related to lifting patients or moving patients from beds to chairs. That program is already successful.
It does not have to be a big capital program such as building a new building—but we have some examples of that. it is also about capital investment we can make within our own facilities to make sure that we are looking after staff. That staff then know
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