Healthy Australia Forum video footage is now online

Video footage of the Healthy Australia Forum entitled "An 'Ethical' Approach to Health Workforce Sustainability: Desirable? Achievable?" is now available to view on the Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre website.

Focus of the Forum

Australia has been reliant on internationally recruited health workers to sustain its health systems. Against the backdrop of growing concern globally about health workforce shortages, Professor Buchan assessed what health workforce 'sustainability' might mean for Australia, given the policy direction set out in the recently approved World Health Organization Code on international recruitment of health workers. He examined the Australian case in the broader context of international health care labour markets and the international recruitment and migration of health workers.

There were two respondents to this presentation:

• Dr Andrew Lavender, Deputy Director, Department of Anaesthesia, Pain and Hyperbaric Medicine and Senior Staff Specialist, Royal Adelaide Hospital, responded from the perspective of a health expert with wide public health interests.
• Professor Helen McCutcheon, Head of the School of Nursing and Midwifery, Division of Health Sciences, UniSA, responded from the perspective of a senior academic working in the applied field of nursing training and with a background in research across nursing, management, and topics such as workforce redesign, lean application to healthcare, and ageing.