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Health care workforce crisis in Australia: too few or too disabled?
Author(s) -
Scott Ian A
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
medical journal of australia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.904
H-Index - 131
eISSN - 1326-5377
pISSN - 0025-729X
DOI - 10.5694/j.1326-5377.2009.tb02638.x
Subject(s) - workforce , productivity , incentive , government (linguistics) , business , work (physics) , health care , investment (military) , financial crisis , population ageing , population , distribution (mathematics) , public relations , nursing , economic growth , medicine , economics , political science , environmental health , mathematical analysis , mathematics , mechanical engineering , linguistics , philosophy , politics , law , engineering , macroeconomics , microeconomics
A key challenge for the Australian health care system is ensuring that the numbers, distribution and skill set of the health care workforce are adequate to meet the emerging health needs of an ageing population with increasingly high expectations of health care. Professional and government responses have given priority to increasing the overall numbers of practising clinicians by investment in additional training places. Another approach is to enhance productivity of the existing workforce by activating strategies of professional enablement that remove constraints imposed on clinicians by inefficient work practices and inappropriate training programs, maladaptive organisational attributes, misdirected financial and non‐financial incentives, and adverse sociopolitical influences.