Monique Ryan (Kooyong, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Our healthcare workers are the key to the quality, accessibility, effectiveness and sustainability of our healthcare system. A major challenge to our health system is workforce shortages affecting every level of our health system: ambulance and hospital services, GP and community health care, and residential aged care. These shortages are affecting the quality of care provided by Australia's healthcare professionals, as well as their working lives.

Factors fuelling healthcare skill shortages in Australia include the effects of COVID-19, burnout of healthcare workers, an ageing health workforce and the complexity of healthcare training. These issues preceded but have been significantly exacerbated by the continuing COVID-19 pandemic.

Firstly, doctors. Our medical workforce has actually increased in recent years but it has significant sectoral challenges. There are more female doctors and more professionals seeking part-time work. There is a critical shortage of GPs, especially in rural areas. Last year the AMA predicted we would be 10,600 GPs short by 2031. We have geographic maldistribution, an imbalance between specialist disciplines, issues with junior doctors' workloads and wellbeing, a need to move away from international graduates and locums, and a need for more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander graduates.

Secondly, nurses. Health Workforce Australia has foreshadowed a shortage of more than 100,000 nurses in Australia by 2025. We're short of thousands of paramedics across the country, while in some areas emergency calls have almost doubled. In Victoria we have had many tragic incidents of ambulance delays resulting in deaths. We have seen the same with patients left on ramps in overcrowded emergency departments. We have a shortage of hospital and retail pharmacists. We have massive backlogs of patients waiting for delayed care, including elective surgery. It goes on. The healthcare skills shortage is even worse in rural and regional centres of Australia, which struggle to attract and retain staff and which rely more heavily on nurses than do metropolitan areas. We know these issues have been exacerbated by significant housing shortages in regional centres.

The pandemic has also affected the physical health of medical professionals. Healthcare workers were always more likely than the rest of the community to be infected with COVID in the workplace, even if they took appropriate precautions. They've had to cope with that risk. During the pandemic 22 per cent of healthcare workers increased their unpaid work hours, 20 per cent increased their paid work hours, while another 27 per cent had to change work roles. The pandemic has increased the risk of post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression in all forms of healthcare workers. In 2021 the RACP found that 87 per cent of doctors reported feeling burnt out. As many as 75 per cent of nurses in acute care are considering leaving the profession.

If nursing ratios are inadequate, patient care is at risk. When international borders closed during the pandemic, many healthcare staff working in Australia returned to their home countries. Many have not returned. The deficiencies in our training systems were exposed when we realised that reliance on overseas-trained health professionals. Locally, training of medical professionals has been negatively impacted by COVID. Clinical placements have had to be cancelled due to activity restrictions. We've had reallocation of roles. We've had persistent staffing and equipment shortages.

We need vision from the Albanese government. We have to address the state/federal divide of our healthcare system. It impedes coordination of all areas and sectors of our health care. We have to improve how we provide care, who provides it, how those individuals are trained and how they're supported. We need to critically rethink all of our medical services. We need investment in training of all parts of our workforce, and we need to ensure that we can continue to deliver world-class health care in all metropolitan and regional centres throughout this country.

I thank the member for Indi for moving this private member's motion today. I urge the government to commit to the once-in-a-generation reform of these issues that we all so urgently need.

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