The Health Workforce - An Interview with Professor Des Gorman

The Health Workforce: An Interview with Professor Des Gorman (30’)

This is the second program in the Interview series with Professor Des Gorman. Dr Norman Swan interviews Professor Des Gorman on the serious challenges facing the distribution and alignment of health services in Australia.  

This program will be followed immediately by a repeat broadcast of the first interview, The Doctor of the Future: An Interview with Professor Des Gorman (30’).

The status quo of local health systems is characterised by a variously mal-distributed health workforce, slow, isolated and poorly adaptive training programs, and consequential inequities in health access and quality.  Professor Gorman notes that reform is essential if the current health care standards in Australia are to be maintained.

Professor Gorman makes the point that long-term solutions to this problem needs to include a better alignment of the health and education systems with each other and patient care needs, better incentives for health professionals to work in rural areas, and,  the innovative disruption of current models of health service.  This includes using the community health worker as a ‘bridging program’ to provide articulation between a mal-aligned community and a community in need.

Professor Gorman concludes that affirmative and immersion programs are needed throughout the education continuum.  Affirmative schemes are the only way to diversify medical student populations sufficiently to create a cohort of practitioners that will address the health needs of indigenous and other minority populations. Introducing incentives, and having a larger emphasis on the duty of a community health care worker, will provide a solution to the significant mal-distribution problems in the Australian health system.

He summarises his views as follows:  First, the medical workforce is pear shaped.  Second, reshaping the medical workforce will require informed and targeted affirmation and immersion.  Third, time is short.

About the Participants :

  • Dr Norman Swan - Presenter of the Health Report on ABC Radio National
  • Professor Des Gorman - Head of the University of Auckland’s School of Medicine, Professor Gorman has a doctorate in medicine (MD), which was conferred by the University of Auckland, and a doctorate in philosophy (PhD), which was conferred by the University of Sydney. Both doctorates were awarded on the basis of research into brain injuries. His undergraduate education was at the University of Auckland; he  graduated with bachelor’s degrees in Science (BSc), and in medicine and surgery (MBChB).

 

Satellite broadcast :
Tuesday 17th March on Channel 4 at:
8.00pm in ACT, NSW, TAS & VIC
7.30pm in SA
7.00pm in QLD
6.30pm in NT
6.00pm in WA
(satellite broadcast repeated in WA on Channel 23 at 8.00pm)

Repeat satellite broadcast :
Friday 20th March on Channel 23 at:
12.30pm in ACT, NSW, VIC & TAS.
12 noon in SA
11.30am in QLD
11.00am in NT
10.30am in WA

These programs will be available for viewing as web-streamed files or downloadable audio MP3 files from the Foundation’s website after the broadcast.  They are also available for purchase on DVD – both programs on the one DVD.

For more details or to register go to http://www.rhef.com.au/programs/program-1/?program_id=362