Allied Health Insights Vol.3 No.1: Recruitment Concierge: Resolving Workforce Shortfalls For The Tasmanian Health Service?
More than other regions of Australia, Tasmania is challenged by healthcare workforce shortages and needs significant healthcare workforce growth.
To address this, the Tasmanian Department of Health developed Health Workforce 2040, a long-term strategy that includes a focus on attracting and recruiting allied health clinicians.
Scott Gibbings, an acute care physiotherapist and Allied Health Workforce Recruitment & Development Consultant for the Tasmanian Health Service (THS), spent a good deal of 2023 doing the rounds of job expos in the UK and Australia with the goal of finding the right talent to bolster Tasmania’s under-represented health workforce.
Scott is a proponent of finding the ideal role for the client, rather than fitting talent to a vacancy, or “finding the right job and lifestyle for the person”, which is a riff on Cath Cosgrave’s Attract, Connect, Stay recruitment and retention framework, a person-centred approach that posits the idea of care outcomes being directly impacted by an AHP’s personal wellbeing.
Scott developed THS’ version of this framework with some added flourishes, courtesy of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, a bit of Ryan’s Self-Determination Theory, and a dash of the 6 Stages of Change framework: Healthcare Workforce Recruitment Concierge.
In 2023, Scott presented Finding the Right Job for the Person: Healthcare workforce recruitment concierge, a person-centred response to the growing supply crisis at the 15th National Allied Health Conference in Perth, discussing this recruitment framework, its challenges and positive indicators.
In this edition of Allied Health Insights
We chat to Scott about the healthcare workforce recruitment concierge and its efficacy, and we get his thoughts on general issues affecting healthcare recruitment and retention.
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