Unlocking Skills in Hospitals - report from the Grattan Institute

The Grattan Institute - an Australian public policy think tank - has just released a report, "Unlocking Skills in Hospitals: better jobs more care" by Stephen Duckett and Peter Breadon.  The authors argue that enabling less highly-trained hospital workers to play a bigger role could improve jobs for doctors and nurses, save public hospitals nearly $430 million a year and fund treatment for more than 85,000 extra people.

The report suggests ways that hospitals can get a better match between workers and their work.  For example, AINs could free up nurses’ time by providing basic care to patients, specialist nurses could free up doctors’ time by doing common, low-risk procedures now done by doctors and more assistants could be employed to support physiotherapists and occupational therapists. The authors suggest that barriers of culture, tradition, industrial relations and vested interest stand in the way of change and current  workforce roles are outdated.

Peter Breadon wrote a commentary piece in The Conversation earlier this week which summarises the report's findings, Hospital Work Reform, which was answered in the same publication today by Rhian Parker from the University of Canberra who in, Leave Prescribing to Doctors and Nurse Practitioners, urges caution in adopting the recommendations from the Grattan report.