Frontline Health Workers

Ms THOMPSON (Davenport) (14:43): My question is for the Minister for Health and Wellbeing. Can the minister please update the house on the government's recruitment of frontline health workers?

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:43): Thank you very much to the member for Davenport. I firstly thank her for her support for our frontline healthcare workers. It was great to join the member for Davenport, as well as the member for Waite and the Premier, at Flinders Medical Centre on Monday when we were able to update people in terms of our latest workforce statistics across SA Health.

People recall that we committed at the election to recruit an additional 300 nurses, a hundred extra doctors and 350 ambos. Within our first year in office, we had updated the house and the public that we had recruited 550 extra clinicians across the board and that was 89 doctors, 278 nurses, 141 extra ambos and 42 extra allied health professionals. Importantly, these are full-time equivalent and these are above attrition, so these are genuine extra healthcare workers in our system.

How are we going 12 months on from that? We have substantially increased our recruitment of healthcare workers over that time—in fact, double the number of healthcare workers who we have recruited. Now, there are 1,432 more healthcare workers across SA Health than there were when we took office in March 2022. If you break that down, that is 691 extra nurses, compared to our original target of 300 extra nurses; 329 extra doctors, compared to our target of 100 extra doctors; 219 ambos, which is well on the way to our target of 350 extra ambos; and 193 extra allied health professionals, who play an important role across our healthcare system as well.

Of course, it is important that we make sure we are not just recruiting in our metro hospitals—where we were the other day with the member for Davenport where we are expanding beds at Flinders Medical Centre, and the metro local health networks (LHNs) are doing a great job in terms of recruiting extra—but also recruiting in regional areas across the state as well. I am delighted to inform the house that when it comes to regional hospitals, for which there have been fears from some opposite that there would be a reduction in healthcare workers, there has actually been a net increase in our regional healthcare workforce as well. In fact, across our—

Ms Pratt: Truth-telling: Gawler, Kapunda, Whyalla, Victor Harbor, Kangaroo Island, Waikerie. How many midwives from Whyalla? How many midwives in Whyalla right now?

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: They don't want to hear it, sir. They continue their dislike of our healthcare workers, just like when they were making nurses redundant during the pandemic.

Members interjecting:

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: Why would they do that?

The SPEAKER: Minister, I don't think we need to be provoking the opposition. We have the St Aloysius students up there, about to hand out gold stars and elephant stamps to everyone in this place for the great behaviour over the first half of question time. Let's just keep it nice and calm.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: Thank you, sir. I would have hoped that everyone would be delighted to hear that over the course of the past two years, we have increased by 209 FTE our regional workforce across SA Health. That is broken down to 162 extra nurses, 36 extra doctors and 10 extra allied health professionals. Importantly, that is above attrition.

A key part of that has been our graduate program for nurses, where we have been hiring significant numbers of additional nurses through the graduate program in regional areas. This year, there are 206 graduate nurses who are starting based in regional areas, including the largest group being at the Limestone Coast Local Health Network in the South-East, with 49 nurses and eight midwives starting in the local health network on the Limestone Coast. We continue to recruit more and we believe that these numbers are set to increase as well.