Judith Adams (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on something which is very close to my heart. Being perhaps one of the only nurses in the parliament, I was very fortunate to attend a conference at Broken Hill for the Council of Remote Area Nurses of Australia, CRANA. People who attended this conference came from all over Australia—125 of them plus a number of allied health people. All the things we have heard from those opposite today on this are actually being tackled by these nurses, and—guess what?—the Howard government actually supports the organisation.

When the Northern Territory intervention was being brought together, health professionals played a very important part. CRANA was the organisation that the government went to, and they were very careful in the way that they asked the government teams to approach the issue. There was to be no ‘big stick’ approach, though we heard from the other side that this was the intention. It certainly was not the intention. These people have done the most wonderful job in briefing the health teams going through the Northern Territory.

This is CRANA’s 25th year of operation and it was their silver jubilee meeting. On top of their agenda was finding solutions to the health issues impacting on remote communities and to the health workforce crisis gripping Australia. It was the most wonderful conference. I could go on all afternoon talking about the different presentations that were made. It is important to note that nurses and midwives—safe providers of primary health care—are living and working in most communities no matter how small or isolated. Remote area nurses provide a model of care that needs to be acknowledged, and I am sure it is acknowledged by the Howard government. CRANA believes that this model can be part of the solution to the healthcare crisis in Australia.

I will identify some of the key recommendations that were made to improve health care in remote areas, but, firstly, I think it is very important to note that the Australian government cosponsored this conference. It recognises the important role CRANA plays in supporting the remote health workforce across Australia. The government put $25,000 towards the funding of the conference. It also funds the CRANA secretariat to enable CRANA to manage its programs as well as to engage with stakeholders at all levels to develop policies, protocols and initiatives that improve and support remote nursing practice. The government has provided $881,000 over three years for this. CRANA provides the bush crisis line, which is a 24-hour free-call telephone service staffed by qualified psychologists. That service provides crisis debriefing and counselling for job related trauma to isolated remote health practitioners and their families. I note that one of CRANA’s recommendations was that by July 2008 no nurse should be left to practice in isolation. Single nursing posts must be abolished. I certainly agree with that given some of the stories I have heard.

A health research education officer who coordinates and teaches in the Remote Health Practice program at the Centre for Remote Health provides mentoring, clinical supervision and assessment of remote area nursing students and provides academic leadership and resources to CRANA. There was a very good presentation by Vicki Gordon and Sabina Knight, and these two people were asked to coordinate the child health check teams and brief them on what to expect and how to go about their role as they move through the 73 communities in the Northern Territory.

Something that is very important and that I would like to see extended is the First Line Emergency Care, or FLEC, program, which aims to increase the access of people living in remote areas to high-quality emergency care through a program of upskilling of remote practitioners. If these practitioners are not upskilled, they will not stay there, so it is very important that this program, which includes remote emergency care and the maternity emergency care program, is delivered by volunteer trainers. These trainers come from a number of our intensive care areas. Most of them are state employed professionals, but they are there as volunteers to focus on the multidisciplinary advance emergency and trauma management skills.

At the moment this program receives $590,000 over three years, but that amount needs to be doubled. The facilitators are brilliant and it has got to the stage now that defence and mining organisations are requesting that these teams adapt their programs to help them as well. This is recognition of what the Howard government has done in providing this sort of support over the three years, but, as I said, it really needs to be increased. There is also an Indigenous program, which aims to upskill health professionals who service the Aboriginal community controlled health services in emergency care. This includes the production of culturally appropriate teaching resources and simulation material.

With the Prime Minister’s announcement of enrolled nurses now being able to train in hospital settings, I see this as a great way for Aboriginal health workers to become enrolled nurses and have the support and backing of working in a hospital environment rather than trying to sit in a lecture theatre. That is not the way they learn; they learn by hands-on experience. So I think the Prime Minister’s announcement for enrolled nurses to return to hospital based training is very good and I support it.

The comment made after this great weekend by Christopher Cliffe, the President of CRANA, is important:

Let’s mobilise and utilise nurses, the most trusted and abundant of our health professionals. Remote Area Nurses already provide a high level of service to some of the sickest and most disadvantaged people in Australia; with a shortage of doctors their role is even more important. The nursing and midwifery profession isn’t running from the daunting challenges, in fact they are eager to address it head on. I plead with the federal, state and territory governments to meet this call from nurses and midwives, and enable them to tackle the increasing needs of remote and rural committees across Australia. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.

(Quorum formed)