Challenges faced in remote healthcare delivery in Australia

Remote areas refer to places that are away from towns and cities and where there are no large populations of people. Remote or rural areas are usually with unfavorable climate or temperatures as well as the shortage of security, food, and even water sometimes. Most people in white collar jobs do not like to work in those places due to the mentioned disadvantages above. Regarding health, research shows that people in those places have got poor health and are most prone to have health problems and needs. This essay gives an outline of the overall rural or remote healthcare delivery in Australia discussing contemporary remote health practice, models of medical care and difficulties that are involved in enrolling and retaining an outstanding as well as committed professionals. In addition, it will highlight the challenges experience socially and economically, inequalities in getting health services on the bases of health education and treatments, problems in recruitment, unfavorable ecological conditions, and professional hazards of dangers at workplace, topographical and social seclusion are elements that are found to contribute to remote shortcoming (Carey, 2018). This is the common concerns raised by healthcare providers especially if they are requested to work in a rural area.

According to the stubbornness and reluctance by a significant number of health practitioners concerning job opportunities in the rural and remote areas, it is clear that those places have unfavorable conditions for the human safety in a satisfactory and comfortable life (Rollin, Ridout, & Campbell, 2018). Rural ecological are many and vary according to the thing found in them, and therefore it becomes a problem in giving a clear definition of what rural means as a term. For instance, in Australia, rural descriptions involve scarcely disseminated populations, considerable distances in comparison to where towns and cities are as well as diverse land uses and the varieties in social and economic fields. Studies show that individuals residing in remote and rural areas in Australia have got so many shortcomings, particularly in health matters. This shortcoming involves inequality in accessing health services, higher rates of deaths for both infants and adults, prone to attack by many diseases, the possibility of getting harmed in the places of work as well as social and economic difficulties in contrast to urban areas (Carr, & Tait, 2018).

Modern Australian rural societies are described by different categories of groups of people that is aboriginal and non-aboriginal Australians as well as immigrant peoples. It is good to note that people in remote and rural areas look themselves as different from individuals living in urban areas; they are however delighted of their custom and the lifestyle they have (McLachlan, S., Harvey, Newman & Robinson, 2018). Nevertheless, life in these areas is changing, and many rural societies are migrating to towns or urban in accordance to research findings. This might be as a result of new management by the government as a way of bringing people together for the effective management to make it easy to provide help where need be like for example in a drought period.

Shortcomings of living in remote areas in Australia

Due to this movement of rural population, they end up having difficulties in maintaining their cultures, economic issues as well as social matters that are considered to be strengths of any productive community (Philip, & MacLeod, 2018). Domination of the Australian nation by the capitalist is believed to have resulted from this reduction of rural populations. Generally, the young individuals migrate to urban to look for job opportunities, quality education as well as career issues. When this experience is combined with the incapability to qualify the chances urban and well-established centers, contribute to problems of employing and retaining the rural professionals as we have seen even in the health profession.

Health care providers involve medical doctors, the pharmacists, aboriginal health workers, nurses also dominate there regarding their numbers which are about sixty-five percent about the total number of health practitioners in those areas as well as allied health officers and many others. Surprisingly, job vacancies are advertised for every type of health profession, and still, we encounter shortages of health workforce due to reluctant of professional from applying for this post (Wakerman, 2018). Complains have been raised against deficiencies of experienced doctors in remote and rural areas and researchers acknowledges that it is as a result of government influence and priorities. Studies show that the trained doctors view the rural areas as places that lack proper facilities, money and lacks a comfortable working environment concerning their standards.

The reports from the interviews made to the doctors show that they only go to work in rural areas when they have no other option of tracing jobs in urban centers. It is worthy to believe that environments and needs of even the nurses are the same as the ones required by doctors; things such as quality of education, housing, security, accessibility to good foods as well as better infrastructures. Government fails to address these concerns of the health workers and then expect them to be ready to work in such areas whereas others are in a better environment with the same qualification. The Australia Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) have found that there is danger in the nursing field (Malatzky, Nixon, Mitchell, & Bourke, 2018). Australia has been experiencing the shortage of nurses, and the already trained nurses are not able to provide to cover all the areas that need their attention especially in the rural and remote areas (Christiaensen, & Kanbur, 2018). The government has not yet taken care of this issues and that why complaints of health matters are becoming an everyday talk. However, the plan has recently been formed to address these issues as discovered in the national review of nursing education and also by the inquiries made by the Senate.

Issues of health care provider recruitment in remote areas of Australia

The characteristics of health practices in the remote and rural area are the same but differ with those of urban areas because in practicing health professions demands that one can cope with a harsh environment as well as very experienced since supports in such area is very poor. Similarly, health provider should be in a position to work with the limited resources in the health center in rural areas (Jone’s et al, 2018). By the studies, it is depicted that for any health worker to qualify to offer health services in rural areas; one is required to undergo training by an experienced specialist. Generally speaking, nurses and every health care provider must ensure competence to be able to deliver quality healthcare into individuals purposely the rural residents (Hay et al, 2017).

The major concern in Australia government is to focus on health in the rural areas to ensure that all those shortcomings are eradicated and that best services and facilities are installed in that area to avail quality services to the populations in rural. To deal with this reluctant of the nurses to work in rural areas, several universities in Australia incorporated in programs in their program matters dealing with rural health concerns and aims at equipping the undergraduate and post-graduate students with skills and knowledge on how to deliver services in those area as well as how to survive in such environments (Smith et al,2018). The universities are therefore benefiting from the incentives given by the government to aid and ensure the sustainability of this programs. There is a proof that the students who receive their education in the rural areas from their beginning up to the university level are most likely going to work in the rural areas since they are already adapted and have got no fears concerning the environment in rural areas (Azzopardi et al, 2018). The demands of the health professional working in the rural areas to move now and then in search of knowledge and farther training saw as a hindering element for their academic chances. Matters involving seclusion of health care providers in the rural areas that make them find it difficult to continue working in search places. Due to high expectations on issues concerning health practice in rural locations, it discourages a large number of graduates to accept to work in this environment especially because they feel they are less experienced and there is a need to acquire skills from the health professional who has been in the field before. Currently, it has been reported that matters concerning security and personal safety are the major elements affecting the enrolling of health practitioners as well as sustaining them in the workplace.

Health practices in the remote and rural area

Enrollment of the new health practitioners is one of the prominent focus of all divisions of the government of Australia today. To motivate the number of students in the undergraduate level to focus and be interested in practice in the rural, the government have come up several benefits have been set for those who are going to work in those areas (Martin, Baldock, Kumar & Lizarondo, 2018). This benefit involves allocating of the scholarship schemes to the students in medicine department willing to deal with the rural program of service delivery through a program known as Rural Australia Medical Undergraduate Schemes (RAMUS) and also scholarships through undergraduate and post-graduate rural and remote nurse’s scholarship schemes (CURRNS). Similarly, there are also scholarships for the undergraduate allied health scholarship schemes (CRASH) (Ryan, Bergin, White, & Wells, 2018).

In general, the government has come up with the various incentive concerning scholarships to motivate and increase the number of the student enrolling in this field of rural health care and more so to improve the Australians living in rural and remote places. Australia government has further supported the universities offering medical training in establishing a stable department of training the students in rural health practice (Humphreys, Wakerman, Pashen, & Buykx, 2017). In conjunction to this, is the development of more clinical schools to maximize the exposure of the targeted students on how to handle the rural areas (Lai, Taylor, Haigh, & Thompson, 2018). Financing of this program is the backbone of achieving the real change that desirable in these rural areas. It is incredible how vacant position are seen during recruitment of the health workers in the rural area and even those recruited it becomes a big problem in convincing them to remain to offer health services in the rural and remote areas. However, the government is implementing so many ways to attract the health professional in this place by adding incentives in their earnings (Collison, 2018). Despite all this effort by the government, matters such as safety and reducing the workload of the health worker have been neglected.

Australia main aims include integration of services of health by building more health centers in different places to ensure that every place has got a nearer health center where new assistance can be accessed by all the people. Another objective has mobile services which are also called non-hospital-based programs whereby the move from one home or areas where the patient is more comfortable and get treated there. They also aim to carry out health education on how prevention can be done to minimize diseases and infections that mostly attack people due to lack of knowledge on how to avoid them especially in the rural and remote areas where maintaining hygiene is a big problem. It also aims at having the division of labor among the health professional so that each of them can handle a particular field and make it impeccable. Also, satisfying the need of the rural people is another aim they have to minimize mortality rates as well as morbidity rates. Let us look at each of the models (Wakerman et al, 2017). They include:

Enrollment of health practitioners in rural areas of Australia

Integration of services of health. In this case, the primary health care is in a position to offer a wide range of services in their respective localities. This integration makes it possible for the communities to access some health professional depending on them in and there is mutual support within this health centers. This model helps the societies in the rural areas to be able to maintain the health practitioners. This method also makes it easy for the government to finance this primary health care programs and in turn, the communities are in the position to continue benefiting from these multi-services.

Discrete primary care services. This kind of services is provided from a known place in the society where they render their services. The main focus is to maintain a health practitioner services who are mostly hard to find within the remote and rural areas who might be undergoing through hardships in employing and sustaining enough health specialist in these places.

Outreach model. In this case, the services are either provided through a localized place or in a mobile manner in which the health practitioners move from one community to another in different times (Lyle et al, 2017). This is one of the most effective ways that these outreach services are benefiting the communities with since they can access the health services even when they are widely spread or in secluded remote areas.

Telehealth also called telemedicine. For a long period, this model has been at work and very helpful especially where the inadequate in health services have been the major problems. Among another model that has helped to improve the health condition in Australia are the comprehensive primary health care delivery model and this where different health professional is found in a particular community offering service based on the community requirements.

Conclusion

Every individual in Australia has got the right of accessing health services of high quality despite the geographical location and social status. Therefore, the government has got the responsibility to ensure that all this need of people is met desirably. The health professional also has to be always ready to render the services in every place that they are required to offer because that is what they are trained to do. I would recommend that the government consider the issues the health practitioners and accomplish them to create a good working environment.

References

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