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(07) 3105 7800
Turrbal and Jagera Country
Level 4, 348 Edward Street
Brisbane QLD 4000
Health Workforce Queensland (HWQ) recently visited St George, Roma and Charleville to discuss how the newly created South West Queensland (SWQ) Health Workforce Connector (HWC) role could best support local health workforce needs. A large element of the role will be to support GROW Rural as a long-term workforce solution program that HWQ co-designs with local communities to ‘grow’ the region’s health workforce capacity.
A series of conversations took place with health practices, Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services, local councils, Country University Centres (CUCs), Southern Queensland Rural Health (SQRH) and the RFDS.
Overwhelmingly, there was across the board support for the role as a strategy to create structured pathways into primary health care employment for the GROW Rural SWQ students as early career graduates. The importance of recruiting locally was acknowledged as being a significant factor in navigating the social, economic and political characteristics of each community, as was having sustainable primary health care facilities to attract a rural workforce more broadly.
In addition to the HWC working directly with our Health Workforce Solutions team to assist with recruiting to vacant positions, there was appreciation that the HWC will act as a community concierge to promote social and cultural integration for students and health professionals into primary health care settings as a way of retaining the local health workforce.
As part of promoting a Grow Your Own Health workforce strategy the HWC will assist high schools to incentivise their students to consider rural health careers. This element of the role was met with a high level of interest and enthusiasm and clearly reflected the value the region places upon actively participating in being part of the workforce solution. Additionally, there was strong support for the part the CUCs play in advancing tertiary and VET education, as well as SQRH’s ongoing commitment to student and health professional education and training.
It was acknowledged that the lack of childcare and housing continues to limit workforce capacity to recruit and retain workers, however we noted that collectively stakeholders recognised the merits of working together to solve issues collaboratively. HWQ left the region assured this is a very positive foundation on which to move forward together while also allowing the HWC to shape the role to individual community requirements.
The HWC will be onboarded prior to the GROW Rural students next annual visit to Roma and St George in mid-October so they can start working toward building the region’s future workforce.
Preparations for GROW Rural South West Queensland in October are coming together and this year the students will be billeted with local families in St George on the Saturday evening. We are currently seeking families to take part in this activity, so if you are, or know of, community members who may be interested please see the link below for further information.
