These comprehensive workbooks guides nurses new and transitioning to general practice or aged care through key components of these areas of nursing, and will ensure a thorough understanding of the many facets of these primary health care settings.
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Primary health care is any medical service that is provided outside the four walls of a hospital, including aged care, community health, general practice, custodial, schools and many other primary health care settings. Australia's 98,000+ primary health care nurses play a critical role in disease prevention and control to keep people healthy. They provide proactive care and health promotion to keep Australians well.
Tarek Dale, APNA Public Affairs Manager
Last year was busy for government policy development. Four separate reviews of issues impacting primary health care were received by government, and released between October and November 2024. They covered a broad range of issues, all of which directly or indirectly impact nurses working in the sector. Here’s what you need to know.
The Review of General Practice Incentives report1 focused on payments to general practice, such as the Workforce Incentive Payment and the Practice Incentive Payment. The Review of After-Hours Primary Care Programs and Policy focused on after-hours primary care, including need, provision and models.2 The ‘Working Better for Medicare Review’ examined policies that impact the distribution of the health workforce.3 The Scope of Practice Review looked at ‘the evidence related to health professional scope of practice in primary care, as well as the enablers and challenges to working to full scope and providing multidisciplinary team-based care.’4 Taken together, those reports included almost five hundred pages of content and more than 48 recommendations, many of them complex and interrelated.
APNA had significant engagement and input into many of those processes, particularly the Scope of Practice Review, through submissions, consultations, and representation on advisory groups.5
The volume of recommendations and proposals currently before government is significant, solely in relation to primary health care, even without considering reviews and recommendations developed for other parts of the health system. Having undertaken such extensive reviews in its first term, this second term offers an opportunity for the government to adopt a mindset of ‘even more doing, less reviewing,’ according to Blair Comley, the secretary of the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing.6
To start with, the department has established a taskforce to bring together a single, integrated response to those major reviews.7 Karen Booth, APNA Board member and former President, is representing APNA on the advisory group that is providing input to that taskforce, along with several representatives from other health organisations. APNA has also been supporting its members to engage with individual consultation roundtables on funding, health care in rural and remote settings, and other issues.
The scale and scope of the issues being considered by the taskforce is an important opportunity to champion the role of nurses in primary health care. APNA continues to highlight the ways in which regulatory and funding barriers prevent nurses from working to their full scope of practice, including the significant barriers to establishing and operating nurse-led clinics.
While these processes can take time, and it may seem like change isn’t close to hand, we’ve seen progress recently in nurse prescribing, with new standards coming into effect to enable registered nurse prescribing. That’s important progress that reflects long-term advocacy and input from APNA and other nursing organisations. It’ll improve continuity of care and reduce wait times for people in the community, especially in rural and remote settings. And changes like this make a real difference in enabling nurses to work to the top of their scope of practice.
We know from APNA’s Workforce Survey and directly from APNA members that when nurses are enabled to work to their full scope of practice, it’s patients and the community who benefit through improved health outcomes and reduced costs for the health system.
There are still significant questions to resolve around what recommendations the taskforce will make to government, and how government will respond. But whatever the case, at APNA we’re working as hard as we can to champion the change that supports nurses, so that they are valued, visible and respected.
Have your say! If you’d like to get involved with APNA’s advocacy activities, join the APNA Advisory Nurse Panel.
Learn more: APNA Advisory Nurse Panel
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