The New Zealand Health Workforce: A Stocktake of Issues and Capacity 2001

Stocktake 2001 provides a ‘snapshot' of the New Zealand health workforce. It is based on the best data currently available. It also identifies the complex environmental factors that impact on the deployment of the workforce throughout the health sector. The report depicts the way the health workforce looks now and the issues the workforce reported to the Committee.

Various assumptions underlie the work of the Committee. A key assumption is that our health system and health workforce together represent a taonga which we must all value and nurture. Another is that the one constant in health care is the inevitability of change, but that informed debate and decision-making are the basis for constructive change and planned evolution of service delivery. A third assumption is that robust partnerships – for example, between health providers and the community, clinicians and managers, health and education sectors – are the basis not only of effective healthcare and workforce development, but also of a caring society on which health services depend. We are all in this together.

The Committee is now focusing on how the workforce needs to develop to meet the vision set out in the New Zealand Health Strategy. It is taking a person-centred approach, recognising that the needs of the person, whānau, and community must be the primary reference point rather than professional interests. It is focusing on the following areas as priorities for workforce development:

the workforce implications of implementation of the Primary Health Care Strategy
education to meet future health workforce needs
building Māori health workforce capacity
building Pacific health workforce capacity
promoting a healthy hospital workplace environment
building health and support workforce capacity for people who experience disability.

The Committee will release a discussion document setting out challenges, directions and options for the sector in mid July 2002 and undertake wide health sector consultation later in the year.

The Health Workforce Advisory Committee looks forward to working with health practitioners, health service providers and policy makers, and with the wider community, to address these challenges.

Prof Andrew Hornblow CNZM
Chair, Health Workforce Advisory Committee