Health Workforce Condition in Australia and New Zealand

The aim of preparing the report is to provide effective plan for national health workforce for a Western Pacific Region mentioned in the report provided by the World Health Organization and compare the planning and policy of national health workforce of Australia and another Western Pacific Region. New Zealand is chosen for the purpose because the population is categorized as one of such countries that will have shortfall in health workers by 18 million in 2030 (World Health Organization, 2015).

The growth o a nation is determined by the health status also and the main source of providing effective health care service is the effort of the health workforce. Thus, it is important to focus on the health workforce of a nation in order to recognize serious issue and provide effective resolution in order to counter them. The health care system of New Zealand is facing major problem due to the burden of disease and lack of adequate health workers in the nation. According to the conference of the Health Workforce New Zealand Board the population is suffering from low life expectancy, high mortality rate and severe transmissible disease such as tuberculosis and pertussis. Thus, the demand of health care service has increased and the heath workforce sector is suffering from such disease burden (Buchan, J., & Campbell, J. (2013). Whereas, in Australia, the population is more susceptible to transmissible disease according to the world health statistics report provided by the WHO in 2015 (World Health Organization, 2015). According to the Health Workforce Australia, the population is suffering from migration of the health workers mostly the nurses, thus the country is suffering from health workforce shortage (Bradby, 2014). Thus effective plan and policies are required for both of the countries in order to resolve the issue related to the health workforce.

According to the World Health Statistics report presented by WHO, the density of health workforce per 10000 populations is 32.7 in Australia. The number is low, only 27.4 in the New Zealand. The percentage of population that are suffering from transmissible diseases is greater in Australia as compare to New Zealand. The reduction in the child mortality rate is 56% in Australia, which is 45% in the region of New Zealand (World Health Organization, 2015). There are issue present in both of the country related to availability of the resources, especially, in Australian aboriginal population (Asamani, 2016). The economic condition in Australia is better than New Zealand according to the rank provided by the World Development Bank (Toye, Harrigan & Mosley, 2013). Both of the countries are suffering from health workforce issues. Thus, Health and health workforce related policies provided by the countries for the population are needed to be compared in order to understand the loophole in the effort of the each country and identify the best way in order to resolve such issues.

International Intervention and Effective Policies regarding Health Workforce

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, decrease in some health problems has been noticed but they are not up to expectation. Thus, difficulties has been faced by the health professionals due to disease burden and rate of mortality in the nations. The developed nations target to provide improved standard of living to the people of the country in order to improve the status of health and assure 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 education and training plan is playing an important role in order to discourage the health workers and lead to the scarcity 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 increase the work pressure of the health workers.

The status of health of a nation provides important contribution to the growth of the nation. In this regard, the global health agenda has introduced significant interventions to manage the health status of the countries. One of the most important 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 support could help to retain the efficient health professionals in the population and improve the health workforce condition.

Data Profile of Each Country Related to Health and Health Workforce

In order to introduce improvement in the health workforce of Australia, the government has provided effective planning and policies. Such planning include 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 is 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 condition of health system of any nation depends on their economic and social condition. In order to account these economic and health system related parameters the following content is going to examine various data published by WHO from last few years. The graphical representation will help to identify the comparison between various health parameters of the countries.

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.

Country	Density of nurses per 10000 population
Australia	106.8
New Zealand	108.7

Source: (World Health Organization, 2016)

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. 

Country	Density of Physicians per 10000 population
Australia	32.7
New Zealand	27.4

 Source: (World Health Organization, 2016)

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.

Country	% of health expenditure of government (2010)	% of health expenditure of government (2012)
Australia	68.7	67
New Zealand	78	82

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

Country	% of health expenditure from GDP (2010)	% of health expenditure from GDP (2012)
Australia	8.1	8.9
New Zealand	7.6	10.2

Critical Issues in the Countries regarding Health Workforce

Table 5 is showing the adult mortality per 1000 population.

Country	No. of male per 1000 population	No. of female per 1000 population
Australia	78	45
New Zealand	80	52

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

Country	% of child mortality rate
Australia	3.4
New Zealand	5.2

Over the past few decades the burden of disease in the Australian population especially the aboriginal population becomes high. There is a noticeable increase in the communicable 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. The mortality rate of the nation has been affected due to such rise in the transmissible diseases. Other health issues such as illness related to diet and lifestyle of the people, for example cardio vascular risk, cancer, respiratory disorder and obesity have also increased the demand of health service in (Kim, Farmer & Porter, 2013). However, the countries of Western Pacific region such as Australia and New Zealand has failed to make access efficient health service to the needy people. The major issue is the lack of availability of adequate health professionals. In the recent years the wastage of human resources has been experienced by the population. There are different angles of vision for the incident of wastage of human resources. In some cases it has resulted from the underuse of the resources, whereas in other cases the wastage is due to inability to utilize efficient 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. Many health workers have changed their jobs due to such disaster in the health sector, 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 noticeable issue in the Australian region related to the health workforce is the significant increase in the death rate of the health workers due to injury or accident commenced by the working environment and infrastructure in the health care sector. The death of nurses has been increased by 26% approximately (Hoyler et al., 2014). One of the major problems is the poor performance of the well-being specialist organizations in managing the well-being of the population. Many indigenous well-being specialist organizations are present in the aboriginal region that works to maintain the well-being of the population, but they lack cooperation while working and they provide less attention to the investigation process related to the well-being of the population. Due to such poor performance they fail to identify the issues regarding the well-being and lack the potentiality to introduce significant 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, Providing focus to such matter is important in order to  provide adequate service to counter the critical issues in such countries.

Effective Recommendations in order to Address such Issues

• Providing antiviral therapy, programme for immunization and vaccination is important as it could help to reduce the burden of communicable disease and resulted in the reduction of 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 include 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:

It can be stated from the above analysis that, both the Australia and New Zealand population are suffering from major health workforce issues. 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 address 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.

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