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31 Oct 2019
The Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) and National Boards have released results from a social research project aimed at helping us understand perceptions about us and our work.
The aim of the social research project was for AHPRA and National Boards to better understand what the community, regulated health professions, and our stakeholders think and feel about us, particularly in areas of understanding, confidence and trust.
AHPRA and National Boards are using insights gained from the project to better understand how registered health practitioners view what we do and to inform how we can improve our engagement with both the professions and the community.
Today, AHPRA has released a report of results from the project which included a short, anonymous survey to a random sample of registered practitioners from across 15 of the 16 regulated health professions. (Because the practitioner survey was conducted before paramedics joined the National Scheme the report does not include survey results for this profession.)
The anonymous survey of practitioners was done simultaneously with an anonymous survey sent to a random sample of members of the public across communities in Australia. Both surveys were managed by an independent consultant.
The Medical Board of Australia has also published a report based on the results of the online survey of registered medical practitioners.
To help inform our future work to ensure the public has access to a safe registered health workforce, we are surveying practitioners and the community again in 2019.
July 2020 will mark 10 years since implementation of the National Registration and Accreditation Scheme which now regulates more than 744,000 practitioners registered across 16 health professions. This is a significant increase from the 300,000 registered practitioners from across 10 health professions in 2010.
Since 2012, five health professions have joined the scheme, the latest being paramedics in December 2018. (Nursing and midwifery were officially recognised as separate professions under amendments to the National Law1 last year.)
1 The Health Practitioner Regulation National Law, as in force in each state and territory (the National Law).