The Nurse Practitioner Workforce Plan (the Plan) has been developed to guide long-term nurse practitioner workforce planning across Australia.
The Plan provides Australia’s strategic direction for NPs for the next 10 years and beyond.
About the Plan
The aim of the Plan is to improve the accessibility and delivery of person-centred care to Australian communities through a well distributed, culturally safe nurse practitioner (NP) workforce. It has been developed from broad public consultation, evidence, research, and under the guidance of the Nurse Practitioner Steering Committee.
The Plan provides actions to build a sustainable highly trained NP workforce. It details how to remove key barriers currently facing the workforce, build workforce numbers, and increase access to care for all Australian communities.
Goals of the Plan
The Plan sets out four overarching outcomes:
- increase NP services across the country
- improve community awareness and knowledge of NP services
- support NPs to work to their full scope of practice
- grow the NP workforce to reflect the diversity of the community and improve cultural safety.
To ensure actions are coordinated effectively across the whole of the health workforce, the actions within the Plan are built upon a foundation of leadership, collaboration and co-design, and data, evidence and research. The actions are grouped into four themes:
- education and lifelong learning
- recruitment and retention
- models of care
- workforce planning.
Download the summary Nurse Practitioner Workforce Plan pdf version HERE
Read the full Nurse Practitioner Workforce Plan HERE
Source: Department of Health and Aged Care