Health Work Force Planning Assignment

Health Work Force Planning Assignment

The assignment is designed to focus students on researching the existing policies and practices in place within Australia for the acceptance of international health workers to work in the Australian health care system.

Task

WHO (2016) has published a report entitled “Working for health and growth: investing in the health workforce”. [1]Report of the High-Level Commission on Health Employment and Economic Growth. One of the ten recommendations to transform the health workforce for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) relates to international migration.

The Recommendation Is

Advance international recognition of health workers’ qualifications to optimize skills use, increase the benefits from and reduce the negative effects of health worker migration, and safeguard migrants’ rights. (p. 12) The assignment involves researching data on the level of reliance of Australian on international migration for the health workforce, the reasons for these developments, and whether the current policies adequately address the negative effects of health worker migration.

The assignment, to be presented in report format, should address each of the following questions

a.) How reliant is Australia at present on international health worker immigration to meet workforce supply? This section should include the presentation of data on the proportion of the clinical health workforce by category (medical practitioners, nurses and midwives, dentists, pharmacists, other allied health) who have initial qualifications from overseas countries. It should also report the current status on each category of the clinical health workforce in terms of shortage, balance or oversupply.

b.) What are the current Australian government policies on international health worker immigration?

c.) What are the reasons historically for this development within Australia?

d.) Are the current policies sustainable?

e.) What changes should the Australian government consider implementing to reduce the negative effects of health worker migration?

[1] WHO (2016). “Working for health and growth: investing in the health workforce”. [1]Report of the High-Level Commission on Health Employment and Economic Growth. Retrieved from: http://www.who.int/hrh/com-heeg/en/

Criteria

YOU WILL BE ASSESSED ON THE FOLLOWING:

{A.} Academic writing skills, use of report format and APA.

{B.} Ability to introduce the topic and findings in a well summarised Executive Summary.

{C.}Identification, extraction and analysis of health workforce data.

{D.} Use of charts and or tables to support analysis and comparison of key data.

{E.} Critical analysis and synthesis of the relevant literature and data to support your selection of workforce categories which are undersupplied.

{F.} Ability to make recommendations to support improvements in workforce supply and setting of targets.

Resources

Provide your answers based on the unit materials, recommended readings in Modules 1 and 2, and any other academic publications. See the hints.doc on vUWS for report writing. There are a range of resources which can be accessed for the information to be submitted in order to answer question. These include: Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) annual laborforce reports by category until 2012.

Feedback Details

VIA GRADE MARK

Students should note that presentation in this first assignment e.g. grammar, spelling, punctuation, use of report format, academic writing style and referencing are worth 15/40 marks. This is because the number one generic competency expected of health graduates by health managers, potential future employers, is communication skills, both written and oral.

Furthermore, integrity and ethical conduct e.g. honesty, accurate referencing and acknowledgement of sources has been found to be the most important single competency. It is strongly recommended that you read the assessment criteria in the rubric and detailed feedback provided on marking the assignment to avoid errors in further assignments.

You will also notice that the rest of the marks for content in this assignment require that students engage in critical analysis, without which a mark of credit or higher cannot be awarded as per UWS Assessment Policy. This means that students must learn to weigh up strengths and weaknesses in academic argument, identifying shortcomings, limitations and what works well, and questioning of how things are done now. This can be achieved by reading widely and finding current literature from refereed journal articles especially recent international literature.

Here “current” means published in the last five years or from 2011 onwards unless the source is considered a seminal source and therefore worthy of inclusion. Use of ten recent readings is minimal. The quality of recommendations to improve upon current practice also identifies students’ ability to critically analyse current literature and practice. Recommendations should be original and emerge from the readings cited in the assignment.