The Government has unveiled a new plan to tackle issues within New Zealand's health workforce after data revealed alarming shortages.
Minister of Health Ayesha Verrall said protecting, promoting and improving the health of New Zealanders is only achievable with a strong and well-supported health workforce.
This has seen the development of New Zealand's 'Health Workforce Plan', which was released on Tuesday.
The new plan - created in partnership with Te Whatu Ora and Te Aka Whai Ora - comes after new data released on Tuesday highlighted the workforce shortages facing the health sector.
The data showed New Zealand will need to recruit or train another 1600 health professionals a year just to maintain current staffing levels relative to population growth. This is despite the number of new nurses registered in the past year increasing to 8000 - which is up from 5000 the previous year.
New Zealand is estimated to be currently short by 4800 nurses, 1700 doctors, 1050 midwives, 220 dental or oral health practitioners, 200 anaesthetic technicians, 170 pharmacists, 120 sonographers, 30 radiation therapists and 30 clinical or cardiac physiologists, according to Te Whatu Ora Health NZ.
But Te Whatu Ora estimated another 8000 nurses, 3400 doctors and 250 midwives would be needed to make up shortfalls in health demand out to 2033.
The plan will target six areas which are:
- Māori health workforce recruitment and retention
- Pacific health workforce recruitment and retention
- Driving local-led innovation in training
- Boosting recruitment in priority workforces
- Retention, including through support
- Developing clinical workers to become leaders
Specific initiatives and actions outlined in the workforce plan include:
- Growing rural and interdisciplinary training programmes to enable larger student intakes
- Growing 'earn-as-you-learn' programmes across health professions
- Creating 135 new training places a year for allied and scientific professionals, including paramedics, oral health therapists, radiation therapists and pharmacy prescribers and anaesthetic technicians
- Seed funding for new programmes to grow these allied professions
- Sustained investment in 'Return to Nursing' and support for internationally qualified nurses to get ready to practice in New Zealand
- Launch of a 'Return to Health' project focused on flexible opportunities for those with health qualifications to return to work
- Expanding access to cultural and hardship support for Māori and Pacific students in training to minimise student attrition and grow workforces faster
- Establishing funding for Māori providers to take more students on placement and to offer increased training and development roles.
Verrall said significant progress has already been made to improve the health workforce over the past year and believes New Zealand now has a roadmap to build on to further retain, grow and recruit workers.
"While the modelling in this plan might be confronting to some, I think it's important that Te Whatu Ora is clear on workforce shortages to enable action," she said.
"Today's plan also signals bigger shifts needed over time to make our health workforce sustainable. Those are focused on reducing reliance on the global market, growing our own rural health teams and building a workforce representative of communities across New Zealand."
The challenges facing healthcare workers aren't unique to New Zealand Verrall says, with a global workforce shortage and long-term under-investment highlighting the issues facing health workers.
"Over the next year, stabilising our domestic workforce and supporting them to manage the day-to-day pressures will be a key focus. Our healthcare workforce spans across a variety of practices, and each of these workers is vital," Verrall said.
"It will take time for the actions we're taking to be fully realised, however, we are laying the foundations for much-needed fundamental change in how we regulate, train, invest and recruit for the future.
"This requires partnership and drive from other parts of our health system, and across government. It must be a key focus for all our health agencies over the next year."
The Opposition reacts
The reaction from Opposition parties was quick to come in following the Government's announcement.
ACT Party leader David Seymour told AM Early on Wednesday the 'Health Workforce Plan' has been a long time coming and supports the Government finally implementing it.
"We should be asking how many doctors are going to retire, how many people are going to be born, how many doctors and nurses will be needed and how many are being trained and all of those questions," he said.
"The amazing thing is they rejected that idea back then, they've now had six years in Government and they've said, 'Oh, we should probably check how many nurses and doctors we are short.'"
Seymour believes the plan will be mostly talk considering the Government's recent track record.
"The wider picture is amazing, I don't know what's gone wrong that somebody in the health department press release team has maybe done a bit of meth and just started putting out press releases like you wouldn't believe," he said.
"It's pretty gutsy from Labour because the truth in health care is the waiting lists are up, vaccination rates are down, we're losing doctors and nurses to Australia.
"The Government spent most of their time spending half a billion dollars restructuring into a Māori Health Authority and a non-Māori health authority. We'd actually just need to get stuff done, get people vaccinated, get operations done and so on."
National's health spokesperson Shane Reti hit out at the Government saying after six years of failure, this latest health announcement from Labour was "too late" for health workers.
"The Government chose to focus on the bureaucracy, rather than the frontline. And with the workforce now in crisis, Labour is desperate to make it look like they're doing something but it's all too little, too late," Reti said.
"You know, maybe they should have thought about that before they were so late coming to the day-one pathway for nurses, so I think they've been the masters of their own mistakes here."
Reti pinpointed some holes in the plan, including a lack of any costings, while also pointing out his concerns over midwife recruitment and calling for a bigger focus on retention.
"There's no really strong pathway for midwives but I'm not surprised by that because a year ago the minister told me there was no shortage of midwives in regions and that the regions were coping," he said.
"What's also missing is around the 3000 extra nurses who've registered. What is really important and what they [Labour] continue to fail to put out at the same time is how many have left."
Reti said National would announce further health policies leading up to the election.
