North West Queensland inter-agency allied health workforce strategy scoping project

North West Queensland Inter-agency Allied Health Workforce Strategy Scoping Project team and key stakeholders have developed a proposed strategy that focuses on early career recruitment and support using the Allied Health Rural Generalist Pathway. The proposal includes a plan for an initial two-year implementation of the strategy that will be presented to partner organisations for endorsement. Local public and primary care health services, the Primary Healthcare Network, University Department of Rural Health, Queensland Department of Health and Health Workforce Queensland all contributed to the scoping project.

The proposed strategy applies an ‘own grown’ approach to allied health workforce development that is supported by a collaborative, inter-agency partnership. The Allied Health Rural Generalist Pathway is a primary focus of the strategy, as it provides intensive development of clinical and non-clinical (service/professional) skills for the early career workforce, and education outputs (activities, assessments) that can be tailored to service outcomes required of the employer. The Scoping Project Report and the Policy Brief is attached below and will soon be available on the Health Workforce Queensland website.

The proposed strategy includes:

• Participating health services establishing one or more Allied Health Rural Generalist (AHRG) training positions,
• Access to AHRG training grants covering education costs and assisting the employing organisation to address
  barriers to training and support for early career practitioners,
• Adjustments to the primary care service commissioning model to enable the allocation of training and
  supervision time,
• Interagency collaboration to generate a critical mass of resources that each individual agency could not source or
  allocate independently,
• Building a critical mass of AHRG trainees and adopting a training cohort approach that is supported by the
  University Department of Rural Health to optimise supervision and learning support, and
• Use of formal post-graduate program in rural generalist practice to structure learning for early career trainees.

Findings and outputs of the scoping project may be applicable in other regions. We encourage you to share this information with
any relevant stakeholders. If you would like any further information, please contact Sarah Venn, Health Workforce and Service Planning Manager, at svenn@healthworkforce.com.au or 07 3105 7800.

NWQ Inter-agency Allied Health Workforce Strategy Scoping Project_Attachment2_June2020

NWQ Inter-agency Allied Health Workforce Strategy Scoping Project_Report_June2020