Data source
National Health Workforce Data Set
The Workforce Surveys are administered to all health practitioners registered by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) and are included as part of the registration renewal process. The workforce surveys are voluntary. The respective surveys are used to provide nationally consistent workforce estimates. They provide data not readily available from other sources, such as on the type of work done by, and job setting of, health practitioners; the number of hours worked in a clinical or non-clinical role, and in total; and the number of years worked in, and intended to remain in, the health workforce. The surveys also provide information on those registered health practitioners who are not undertaking clinical work or who are not employed. The information from the workforce surveys, combined with some National Registration and Accreditation Scheme (NRAS) registration data items, comprises the National Health Workforce Dataset (NHWDS).
Details of medical practitioners, nurses, and allied health practitioners registered with the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) are available for public access through the Department of Health and Aged Care’s Health Workforce Data Tool (HWDT). The numbers in this report reflect those extracted using HWDT as of 1 July 2024. Workforce for each profession is defined as those employed in Australia in the profession as one who:
- reported (the week before the survey) practising in Australia (including practitioners on leave for less than 3 months), or
- was involved with work that is principally concerned with their health discipline (including non-clinical roles – for example education, research, and administration).
Physicians and nurses specialising in palliative care
This report examines medical practitioners and nurses, as these professionals can be identified using the HWDT as specialist palliative care providers. In Australia, both doctors and nurses usually complete specialised training in addition to their medical or nursing degrees to work in palliative care.
Medical specialists must have completed post-graduate specialist training to become a palliative medicine physician. Palliative medicine physicians are required to have completed 3 years of full-time equivalent training in either a paediatric or adult setting under the supervision of a palliative medicine physician. Successful trainees gain the qualification of Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (FRACP) / Fellowship of the Australasian Chapter of Palliative Medicine (FAChPM) and are accredited to practice as a palliative medicine physician in Australia or New Zealand. Medical practitioners may also complete a 6-month Clinical Diploma in Palliative Medicine, but this qualification does not result in specialist accreditation (RACP 2020).
The classification of nurses in Australia varies with the type of training that has been undertaken (see Department of Health and Aged Care website for more information). Nurse practitioners, registered nurses and enrolled nurses need to complete a variety of short or more comprehensive courses (including postgraduate certificates and Master’s degrees) to work in the field of palliative care, and postgraduate qualifications are generally required for nurses working in specialist palliative care services (Centre for Palliative Care 2021). While data on nurse practitioners are included in NHWDS and have been reported in Factsheets for Nursing and Midwifery, nurse practitioners are not identified in the HWDT and are therefore not included in this section. Further, in the Health Workforce Data Tool nurses and midwives are grouped together under professions, hence the comparison of palliative care nurses is to all nurses and midwives in this chapter.
In HWDT, employed palliative medicine physicians only include practitioners whose main speciality is palliative care. Employed palliative care nurses include only nurses whose principal job area is palliative care. This excludes those practitioners who:
- practice palliative care as a second or third speciality
- are registered in the profession but are retired from regular work
- work outside the profession
- work in the profession but are on extended leave of 3 months or more
- are only engaged in unpaid/volunteer work or
- work outside Australia.
Note that the palliative care workforce is made up of a broad range of professional groups, each playing a unique role in supporting people with a life limiting illness to receive comprehensive, patient-centred care. It is recognised that general practitioners, other medical specialists, social workers, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, and other allied health professionals form an integral part of the palliative care workforce. However, existing national data sources are not able to accurately capture the extent of palliative care services provided by these health professionals.
The full-time equivalent (FTE) is defined in this report as the number of standard-hour workloads worked by employed health professionals. The FTE is calculated by multiplying the number of employed professionals in a specific category by the average total hours worked by employed people in that category and dividing by the number of hours in a standard working week. The standard working week, equivalent to 1 FTE, is based on working 38 hours per week for all practitioners except for medical practitioners, where it is defined as 40 hours. In this report, the FTE for palliative care nurses is therefore based on working 38 hours per week and for palliative medicine physicians 40 hours per week.
Past and present surveys have different collection and estimation methodologies, questionnaire designs and response rates. As a result, caution should be taken in comparing historical data from the AIHW Medical Labour Force Surveys prior to 2010 with data from the NHWDS. Also, there may be differences between the data presented here and that published elsewhere due to different calculation or estimation methodologies or extraction dates. Additionally, the HWDT uses a randomisation technique to confidentialise small numbers. This can result in differences between the column sum and total and small variations in numbers from one data extract to another.
Further information regarding the Medical practitioner workforce and Nursing and midwifery workforce surveys is available from the Department of Health and Aged Care’s Health Workforce Data website.
References
Centre for Palliative Care (2021) Professional Development, Centre for Palliative Care website, accessed 22 June 2023.
RACP (Royal Australian College of Physicians) (2020) Training pathways, RACP website, accessed 22 June 2023.