Allied Health Insights Vol.1, No.4: Workforce Shortages in Allied Health
Welcome to this week’s edition of Allied Health Insights™, a weekly newsletter published by HealthWork Publishing in collaboration with AHP Workforce.
If you have long waiting lists, difficulties recruiting staff, and are getting close to burn-out because of staffing shortages, you are not alone. We all have stories of the huge challenges in accessing sufficient allied health (and other) workers to meet the burgeoning demand in the disability, aged care, community, hospital sectors—and in fact any space that employs health workers right now. The first (and often the only) solution that most people think of when they have workforce shortages is to increase supply. However, training a new workforce is not a realistic, quick fix to address workforce shortages. This week, we focus on the challenge of workforce shortages in allied health, proposing a slightly different solution to the issue—to focus on managing your service demand instead. We can’t all be all things to all people, so it is a good time to consider where your resources are best placed so you can have the greatest impact. Sometimes, that means managing your waiting list in a different way.
Our A-Z of Allied Health presents the small and less well-known profession of Child Life Therapists (sometimes known as Play Therapists). Child Life Therapists help make challenging health interventions a little more manageable for children.
