Health Workforce Condition And International Interventions: A Study On Australia And New Zealand

Health Workforce Condition in Australia and New Zealand

The following paper will provide brief idea about the health workforce condition in the countries, international intervention and effective policies regarding health workforce, data profile of each country related to health and health workforce, critical issues in the countries regarding health workforce and effective recommendations in order to address such issues in an effective manner.

In Australia and New Zealand, reduction in some health issues has been found but they are not up to expectation. Thus, the health professionals are facing difficulties due to disease burden and mortality rate in the nations. It is the target of developed nations to provide improved standard of living to the population in order to improve the health status and ensure faster growth. The workforce planning experience is limited in case of New Zealand. The first workforce planning has been done in the year 1976 with the leadership of Medical Council of New Zealand (Boulton, Tamehana & Brannelly, 2013). Their effort could not provide effective outcomes to the health workforce sector. The main problem is they have failed to identify the requirements; thus the provided interventions has failed to provide effective service. Whereas in Australia, the condition of providing less focus to management in the health sector, lack of effective training and education is playing an important role to demotivate the health workers and lead to the shortage of health worker in the remote areas. The unequal distribution of human resource is another problem in the countries that need to be countered through effective interventions (Asamani, 2016). As mentioned before, the disease burden and increasing demand of health service in the countries also affect the heath workforce as it increases the work pressure of the health workers.

Health status of a nation provides effective contribution to the growth of a nation. In this regard, the global health agenda has introduced effective initiatives to manage the health status of the countries. One of the most effective interventions is the establishment of Global Health Workforce Alliance in the month of May 2006 (Benton & Dionne, 2015). The Global Forum on Human Resource has provided support to the countries in order to counter the issue of unequal distribution of human resources related to health. Effective support has been provided by the United States and United Kingdom in order to improve the ability to provide effective service to the population, for example, providing scholarship to the nursing student and opportunity to study in educational centre of such nations (World Health Organization, 2016). Such international interventions could help to retain the skilled health professionals in the population and improve the condition of the health workforce.

International Interventions and Effective Policies

In order to improve the health workforce sector in Australia, effective policies and planning has been provided by the government. Such planning includes establishment of Department of Health and Ageing in 2010 to provide facilities to the aged care workforce. Another intervention is the creation of Health Workforce Australia in 2009, which provides effective strategies to deal with the issues related to access and equity of resources, strengthen patient involvement, collaboration of workers to provide better service and others.  There are Indigenous Doctors Association to provide effective care to the aboriginals. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Pharmacy Scholarship Scheme has been provided in order to encourage the population to take interest in the health care system (Mason, 2013). Whereas, in New Zealand, the Health Workforce Board is the main authority that provides effective intervention’s in order to resolve the issue related to health workforce. The establishment of Committee advising on Professional Education is one of the best plan that provide effective education training related strategy to improve the health workforce. The ministry of health publishes occasional paper for the health and disability workforce in New Zealand in order to help them to recognize issues and provide effective plans and service in order to resolve them (Came, 2014). In addition, World Health Assembly has provided resolution to improve the health workforce in the nations (World Health Organization, 2016).

The healthcare condition and operational support of any nation depends on their economical condition and political environment. In order to gauge these economical and healthcare related parameters the following content is going to examine various authentic data published by WHO from last few years. The graphical representation of these data will help to visualise the comparison between various parameters and data charts.

Table 1 is showing the density of the nurses per 10000 population in Australia and New Zealand. The difference in the density is indicated that the number of nurses is in the health workforce of Australia is less than New Zealand.

Table 2 is showing the density of physicians per 10000 populations in Australia and New Zealand. Whereas the density of nurses is low in Australia, the density of physicians is high than New Zealand. 

Table 3 is showing the health expenditure difference of the government in two years. The expenditure has decreased in case of Australia, whereas, in New Zealand, the government has increased its expenditure for health sector.

Table 4 is showing the contribution of GDP on health expenditure which is greater in New Zealand.

Data Profile of Australia and New Zealand

Table 5 is showing the adult mortality per 1000 population.

Table 6 is showing the child mortality rate in the countries.

Over the past few decades the disease burden of the Australian population especially the aboriginal population becomes high. There is a significant increase in the transmissible diseases such as pertussis and tuberculosis (Duckett & Willcox, 2015). The burden of transmissible disease is also an important issue in New Zealand that play vital role in increasing the work pressure of the health workers. Such rate of increase in the communicable disease has affected the mortality rate of the nations. In addition, non-communicable diseases such as illness related to diet and lifestyle of the people, for example cardio vascular risk, cancer, respiratory disorder and obesity have also increased, thus the demand of health service become high. (Kim, Farmer & Porter, 2013). However, the countries of Western Pacific region such as Australia and New Zealand has failed to provide adequate health service to the people with need. The main problem is the lack of availability of health workers. In the recent years the populations are experiencing significant wastage of the human resources. The incidents of wastage of human resources include different angles of vision. The wastage has resulted from the underuse of the resources in some case, whereas in other cases the wastage has resulted from inability to utilize important skills (Buchan & Campbell, 2013). One of the most important issues in the populations is the availability of health education and proper training for different health workers. The countries provided efficient fund to the health sector in order to make effective plans to improve the sector, but the problem is that, they fail to identify the central requirement of the health workforce and thus the investment failed to achieve expected outcomes. Due to such condition in the health sector the health workers have changed their jobs in some region, which is a threat to the health workforce of the nations. According to research, the health sector of the nation is losing the health professionals such as nurses about 1% per year (Yee et al., 2013). The rate is low but in the long term it could lead to rise in the incident and could indicate serious health workforce crisis in the region.

Another serious issue in the Australian region regarding the health workforce is the increasing death rate of the health workers due to injury and accident induced by the work culture and infrastructure in the health care sector. The increase in the rate of death of the nurses is 26% approximately (Hoyler et al., 2014). One of the most important problems in managing the well-being of the nation is poor performance of the well-being specialist organizations. There are many indigenous well-being specialist organizations in the aboriginal region that works in order to provide and maintain the well-being of the population, but they lack coordination with each other while providing service and they provide poor attention to the investigation process regarding the well-being of the population. Due to such poor management they fail to recognize the issues regarding the well-being and lack the ability to introduce effective interventions in order to resolve the issue (Truth, 2013). In case of New Zealand, the issue is in the base of the planning regarding health workforce, for example issues related to management, workforce population, benchmarking and care modules (Beddoe & Deeney, 2016). Thus, it is important to look into such matter and provide adequate service in order to counter the critical issues in such countries in an effective manner.

Critical Issues in the Health Workforce

• Providing antiviral therapy, programme for immunization and vaccination is important as it could reduce the burden of communicable disease, thus reduce the pressure of the health workforce in the nation (Decroo et al., 2013).
• Planning need to be done in order to provide proper education and training to the health professionals in order to help them to gain and improve skills to provide care and meet the requirements of the people with need in an effective manner. It could help to encourage the population to engage in health-related field, thus could resolve the issue of workforce shortage.
• Planning regarding the partnership and cooperation of different organizations and regulatory body of health workforce would be done in order to promote intersectoral collaboration in the regional, national and international level. It could help to involve the civil society, unions and other health workers to cooperate each other to provide better service.
• International migration would be including in the base planning as it could help the national and international health organizations to optimize the use of skills of the health workers and inspire the health professionals to give their optimal effort to their responsibilities. Upgraded and broader international agreement and policies on health workforce could increase the mutual benefits.
• It is important to provide investment in order to increase health sector jobs in the countries considering the factor like using right skill and right person to the right field. It would be done through the improvement of labour market policy and other government policies that could help to bring significant changes in the health labour market.
• Health service delivery need to be improved in order to resolve the issue of unequal distribution of human resources related to health. In Australia, the government need to focus on make access the proper health service to the aboriginal population in order to reduce the rate of severe disease.
• Increasing the cost-effective technologies in order to cure severe health related issue could help the nations to provide patient-centred health service as the rapid changes in the technology related to health could change the way of providing service to the people with need.
• Finance related planning is most important for the countries like Australia and New Zealand. The countries need to know that where the investment must be done in order to improve the health service and motivate the health workers through effective investment in the health sector. The countries need to increase the funding on domestic and international source. Health financing reform is needed in order to invest money in the area which is appropriate.
• Each country needs to increase the capability to provide humanitarian settings to the health workforce in order to identify serious risk and emergencies in the health sector to ensure the safety of the health workers and reduce the rate of death in the work place due to accident or injury.
• The health workforce regulatory body need to focus on investigation, research on health workforce and should introduce a body for accountability related to health workforce. Professional bodies like WHO could play important role regarding the monitor of health workforce (World Health Organization, 2016).

Conclusion:

From the above analysis it can be concluded that, both the Australia and New Zealand population are suffering from major issue related to health workforce. In New Zealand the main problem is the identification of the needs of the health workforce, thus the country fail to understand the appropriate field of investment in order to improve the health workforce. Whereas, in Australia the problem is related to unequal distribution of human resource related to health, especially in the aboriginal region. Both the countries have problems like disease burden, lack of training and management related issues that lead to the health workforce shortage. The countries are facing problems like migrating of health professionals and death of the health workers in the health care organization due to accident and injuries. Wastage of human resources are another fact that need to be considered. Wastage includes underuse of resources and lack of utilization of efficient skills. The countries have provided effective regulatory authorities and policies to encourage the health workers to provide effective care, still some loopholes are present that are creating problems in health care workforce and creating obstacles in the way of achieving expected outcomes. The recommendation provided in the paper could help the countries to resolve the issue related to health workforce if implemented properly. The strategies regarding education and training would help encourage the population to engage in health related field and could address the issue of health workforce shortage. Investment in the proper sector could help to achieve desired improvement in the health sector, thus the health workers could provide effective service to the population. It is expected that with improvement in the management and availability of the service the countries could counter the issues related to health workforce.

Reference:

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