Westmead Health Forum
Doctors from all specialties gathered at Westmead Hospital's Education Centre to address both the Health Minister and Shadow Health Minister about the current state of the health system and their future plans should their respective party win office.
Both Ms Tebbutt and Mrs Skinner spoke about a wide range of issues but the size of the health budget, a workforce training plan, clinician engagement, hospital beds, efficiency, chronic disease and mental health were the big topics.
Both politicians addressed the need for a medical workforce training plan, with the Health Minister saying, "We've established CETI in order to better coordinate clinical training. And we've also, in our policy yesterday, committed to expanding training opportunities, more funding for intern training positions and also additional funding for specialty training.
"We're also working with states and territories to develop a national training plan through Health Workforce Australia."
Mrs Skinner said, "I've spoken... about our commitment to supporting medical workforce training for new graduates, at all levels in public hospitals... and also our desire to work with the colleges as we develop a workforce plan for the next 10 years - maybe 20.
"It'll be a disaster if we wake up, years down the track, and find that we could have had an opportunity to address this now and we failed to do so. I think we've got to look at this long-term."
On the topic of clinician engagement, Ms Tebbutt talked about how she had spoken with groups like the AMA in forming policy, "We took a different position to what the COAG agreement actually provided for by saying we wanted local clinicians on our governing councils.
"We've set up our clinical councils, so I think that we are well advanced for providing the mechanisms for greater clinician engagement."
Mrs Skinner said that she is in favour of increased clinician engagement, "We've upped the ante as far as some of these boards are concerned. I believe that they need to have a real role in managing the system and in understanding all of the obligations that come with that, including financial, including communication with the communities they represent and so on."
You can find videos from the event on the AMA (NSW) YouTube Channel.
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