News
Workforce Solutions Need Careful Consideration |
| Spokesperson: | AMA Queensland |
| Date: | Wednesday, 12 April 2006 |
| Category: | State Health News |
| AMA Queensland has urged caution in embracing workforce solutions that may not have the necessary infrastructure to support them. AMA Queensland President-elect Dr Zelle Hodge said the State Government needed to consider workforce solutions very carefully at this time so as not to undermine the quality of care delivered to patients. “We are about to have an enormous number of medical graduates in our system and we will need the necessary infrastructure to train them,” Dr Hodge said. “Too much task substitution too early means both medical and nursing graduates won’t have access to the proper training they need to continue to provide patients with the high standard of care we have come to expect in Australia,” she said. Dr Hodge said she was reticent about Health Minister Stephen Robertson’s statement that independent nurse practitioners would provide “more advanced patient care in our hospitals”. “We are very supportive of team based patient care because that is what has been proven to provide the very best outcomes for patients,” Dr Hodge said. “Queensland patients deserve the best quality care and this will not be achieved by substituting nurses for doctors. “We each have something to contribute to the team and by fragmenting the team and therefore the service delivery, you are fragmenting the level of care afforded to patients – and they should always be the priority,” Dr Hodge said. “A health model based around people working independently is not consistent with best quality care. “I would certainly never presume to perform a nurses’ role because doctors and nurses have very different training. “Doctors training provides them with the expertise to assess the total situation and to interpret and thus diagnose appropriately, whereas nurses depend on protocols to provide treatment rather than making an interpretative diagnosis,” she said. According to AMA Queensland there is a common misconception that independent nurse practitioners are a more cost-effective method of health care delivery. “Many studies have shown there is no cost-saving in seeing a nurse versus a doctor in the primary care situation,” Dr Hodge said. |
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