Support and Assistant Models New South Wales Health has introduced 500 ward-based Clinical Support Officers to assist nurses with their administrative load. The National Health Service (NHS) in the United Kingdom (UK) is trialling a similar role of Personal Administrators to take on the administrative load of ward leaders. Bendigo Health and Austin Health in Victoria trialled health AINs across different wards and found improvements in patient and staff satisfaction, staff retention, decreased agency costs and overall increases in efficiency. HWA has recently analysed the assistant and support workforce, including those related to the nursing profession and practice. The analysis considered the scope of practice and models of care for their contribution and their fit to the healthcare team. Assistants have always been an important part of the health workforce. Their roles have often been initiated on an ad hoc basis in the absence of national guidance and support on how to get the best value from this workforce. They are therefore often under-utilised and their value not sufficiently recognised. Health Ministers have recently agreed to the establishment of negative licensing arrangements that include Assistants in Nursing. The Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation has stated that if assistants in nursing are to be widely implemented in the acute sector then they must have nationally mandated minimum educational preparation, be licensed using existing models and have a regulatory framework in place that contains scope of practice. The concern of other stakeholders is to ensure that the operational context for the assistant and support workforce remain appropriately flexible and agile and enable it to be sufficiently responsive in meeting the specific care and service needs of individual organisations. The essential element for uptake of roles is generation and dissemination of evidence from successful models. The recent UK Cavendish Review of healthcare assistance and support workers in NHS and social care comments, workforces “These are set to grow. There is an urgent need to acknowledge them, support them, and plan for them”. Effective planning means using an evidence base to determine local staffing needs incorporating the key requirements for the workplace context, including an enabling industrial environment, continuous support and ongoing evaluation. Barriers and enablers of productivity and innovation Australia now has a national registration and accreditation scheme in place providing scope for boosting flexibility and deployment of skilled workers to meet the needs of communities and employers. This is a significant national reform, which in time can enable and support progressive workforce reform.
Support and Assistant Models New South Wales Health has introduced 500 ward-based Clinical Support Officers to assist nurses with their administrative load. The National Health Service (NHS) in the United Kingdom (UK) is trialling a similar role of Personal Administrators to take on the administrative load of ward leaders. Bendigo Health and Austin Health in Victoria trialled health AINs across different wards and found improvements in patient and staff satisfaction, staff retention, decreased agency costs and overall increases in efficiency. HWA has recently analysed the assistant and support workforce, including those related to the nursing profession and practice. The analysis considered the scope of practice and models of care for their contribution and their fit to the healthcare team. Assistants have always been an important part of the health workforce. Their roles have often been initiated on an ad hoc basis in the absence of national guidance and support on how to get the best value from this workforce. They are therefore often under-utilised and their value not sufficiently recognised. Health Ministers have recently agreed to the establishment of negative licensing arrangements that include Assistants in Nursing. The Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation has stated that if assistants in nursing are to be widely implemented in the acute sector then they must have nationally mandated minimum educational preparation, be licensed using existing models and have a regulatory framework in place that contains scope of practice. The concern of other stakeholders is to ensure that the operational context for the assistant and support workforce remain appropriately flexible and agile and enable it to be sufficiently responsive in meeting the specific care and service needs of individual organisations. The essential element for uptake of roles is generation and dissemination of evidence from successful models. The recent UK Cavendish Review of healthcare assistance and support workers in NHS and social care comments, “These workforces are set to grow. There is an urgent need to acknowledge them, support them, and plan for them”. Effective planning means using an evidence base to determine local staffing needs incorporating the key requirements for the workplace context, including an enabling industrial environment, continuous support and ongoing evaluation. Barriers and enablers of productivity and innovation Australia now has a national registration and accreditation scheme in place providing scope for boosting flexibility and deployment of skilled workers to meet the needs of communities and employers. This is a significant national reform, which in time can enable and support progressive workforce reform.
Nursing%20Workforce%20Sustainability%20-%20Improving%20Nurse%20Retention%20and%20Productivity%20report.docx