Strong values and strong progress

Another big year for PHC nurses and APNA

Ken Griffin, APNA CEO

Source: APNA Primary Times Summer 2024-5

It’s been another significant year for APNA. We are now in the second year of both our 5 Year Strategic Plan and our new APNA values. When we first launched our values, we were determined to ensure that they would not just be ‘words on a wall’. In this spirit, I’ll use the values to give you a sense of what we’ve been up to in 2024.

Better Together: Externally, we have established and nurtured several alliances. These have been with the nursing and midwifery peak organisations to strengthen the voice of nursing and midwifery in national policy. Frequently, nursing and midwifery voices have been divided, but we are now moving forward with high trust and a collaborative approach. All nurses will benefit from this approach.

We have also established the Primary Health Care (PHC) Alliance, which is one of the few forums where a robust cross-collaborative discussion about workforce can be had. Internally, APNA has continued to maintain a strong organisation with low turnover of team members and strong engagement, as measured by our culture survey. The positive culture of APNA is due to the commitment and passion of our team.

Positive Disruptor: Health in Australia is primed for change and APNA has continued to work differently to push the boundaries and challenge the status quo. This can be seen through the Essential Health Summit, our largest ever event with more than 1,100 multidisciplinary delegates and held in partnership with the Australasian Lifestyle Medicine Association. With all the talk about multidisciplinary care, this year we lived it at our largest event.

We also hosted the Primary Health Care Congress, which brought together more than 60 CEO-level delegates to address the biggest issues in primary health care. In a time of health policy change, the policy debate is often divisive and unhelpful. The PHC Congress modelled a new way of engaging that we hope becomes a baseline for future engagement. And we look forward to running this event with the PHC Alliance in the future.

Internally, we have been investing in new technology that we hope to launch to members in 2025 that will reduce some of the education challenges faced by all nurses. This will also provide a platform for new, contemporary membership offerings in the future.

Pursuing Excellence: We have continued to improve the APNA Workforce Survey with a strong advisory committee of leading researchers and organisations, including the Grattan Institute and the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. The survey is key to all of our advocacy as it is the only contemporary dataset of its kind reflecting Australia’s PHC nursing workforce.

PHC nursing is under-represented in academic literature. With the establishment of the APNA Research and Innovation team, we have accelerated our involvement in PHC research, receiving funding from the Medical Research Future Fund for a nurse-led heart failure clinic model in conjunction with the University of Notre Dame. We have also published multiple papers to showcase the outcomes of various APNA projects and the Workforce Survey.

And we’ve been undergoing improvement and renewal of our two student nurse placement programs with a view to improving the experience of students and facilitators. Thank you to every member who has been on this journey with us – we couldn’t do it without you. APNA cannot have big years without having a team and Board that is truly for the cause.

It’s always busy, and always exciting working with this group of exceptional professionals and I would like to thank them for their hard work and tenacity. The final thanks must go to our members. You continue to motivate us to go further. APNA has always been an organisation with a big heart. Whether you experience it on the nurse support line, at the Festival of Nursing or at any of our events, I hope that it has lifted you up during 2024 and I look forward to APNA continuing this work in 2025.