Increasing Health Workforce Flexibility
Convenor: Dr Andrew Singer [DoHA]
How do we increase the flexibility of our health workforce, to maintain an appropriate number of generalist professionals? How do we make education and training of the health workforce more flexible to both meet our future needs and minimize any retraining required when roles or work practices change? What is the right medical model for our workforce?
What is the ideal balance between “generalism” and “subspecialistation” for the health workforce? How do we ensure that there is an appropriate workforce for after-hours and emergency cover, coordination of care for the “whole” patient and an ability to provide services to patients outside of capital cities?
Interprofessional learning and flexibility
Interprofessional learning is about training teams made up of different disciplines, working together for the benefit of the patient. How important is it for medical education, training and extending healthcare in general? If it is important, how do we promote it?
Competency based education and training and flexibility
Can competency-based training be used as a tool to increase health workforce flexibility and portability?
Geographic flexibility/skill flexibility (including rural clinical schools)
What are the important aspects of workforce flexibility we need to concentrate on? Do we need to strike a balance between geographic flexibility (the ability and willingness to work in urban, suburban and rural areas) and skill flexibility (the ability to multi-skill, or to sequentially attain skills in career development), or is one more important than the other? Achieving Vertical Integration
Convenor: Dr Peter White [CPMC]Making genuine progress with developments to improve transitions across the so-called ‘Continuum of Medical Education’ has been a topic of discussion in all sectors associated with the continuum for some time now. But just how much progress has been made in enabling a more streamlined, coordinated transition between stages for those undertaking medical education at a time when more demands look likely to be placed on all sectors, and where are the examples that indicate just what can be achieved? What is the Continuum of Medical Education?
- Is the landscape commonly understood, or is it different things to different people?
Where do competency – and time-based programs fit in the context of facilitating vertical integration?
- Are they mutually exclusive with room for only one, or is there a role for both?
What is the role for Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) and other similar mechanisms in achieving effective and meaningful vertical integration?
- What are some of the issues that are encouraging the use of such mechanisms, and what issues are inhibiting their utility?
The focus of the theme is on examining situations in which attempts have been made to achieve real progress in vertical integration, and the issues involved, as well as the lessons that have been learned from where attempts may not have produced the long-term sustainable progress hoped for in the timeframes that had been envisaged. Building Training Capacity
Convenor: Prof Kevin Forsyth [RACP] How do we provide clinical exposure, experience and good educational supervision for medical students, prevocational doctors and vocational trainees in our health system? Fundamental to good clinical training is the opportunity to experience clinical medicine in a supportive environment with good educational supervision. Given the enormous increase in trainee numbers coming, how can we best organise things at a system level and provide the most appropriate learning environments for our trainees? What are the key challenges to clinical placements for vocational trainees, prevocational trainees and medical students?
• Physical capacity
• Clinical opportunity
• Educational supervision and support
What systems approaches might help overcome some of the obstacles?
What supports are fundamental? Are they common to all phases of the continuum?
How do we build supervisory capacity across the training continuum?
How do we equip supervisors in medical education expertise?
Are clinical placements key drivers to motivating students/doctors to work in areas of need e.g. rural placements, or with populations with poor health indicators e.g. placements within indigenous communities, if so, what is the significance?
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