Psychiatry Workforce Plan SA

Ms PRATT (Frome) (15:19): My question is to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing. What action, if any, has the government taken to address the EY report, Psychiatry Workforce Plan South Australia, released on 4 April? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Ms PRATT: The report states that South Australia will not meet the demand for psychiatrists over the next 10 years, with the largest shortfall coming in 2027 and with supply projected to fall short of demand by 61 FTEs.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (15:19): I think I was considering doing a Dixer on this exact subject, so I am very delighted to have this question from the member for Frome.

The Hon. A. Koutsantonis: We don't do Dixers.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: That's right. Oh no, sorry, we don't do Dixers—government questions. I am very delighted to have this question from the member for Frome because this is an initiative that the government undertook to commission EY to do this work. It was jointly commissioned between both ourselves and the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists because we know that there is a need. We know that there is a need for both public psychiatrists to work in our services and also for private psychiatrists, with people having difficulty accessing those psychiatrists in the community, and we know that there are particular bottlenecks in terms of the training of psychiatrists to get through that training program to become psychiatrists at the end. We also know that there is demand for doctors wanting to become psychiatrists.

Every time one of those training positions through the college opens, there is a ream of different applicants, of doctors wanting to be part of it. So we do have the potential if we work hard on this to unleash that bottleneck, to path forward and deliver an increase in terms of the number of psychiatrists into the future. I really want to pay credit to Dr Patrick Clarke, Chair of the College of Psychiatrists, who has worked very closely with us, and also with Chief Psychiatrist Dr John Brayley, as well as EY, in developing this plan. One of the key ways that we will be able to develop the implementation for this plan is the fact of the investments that we are making in terms of increasing mental health capacity, which are coming online within the next year.

Those additional beds that we are building at The QEH, at Modbury Hospital, at Noarlunga Hospital and at Flinders Medical Centre of course come with additional staffing that we are recruiting for at the moment. We are undertaking a big national and international recruitment campaign already for those positions. Those positions—particularly the first one of those centres is expected to be open at The QEH—are already out. I just had an update earlier today that we have had quite significant numbers of applications for those new jobs available there. So by having these additional centres opening, that allows us to have additional training capacity to make sure that we can get those additional trainees in, and then chart the course for more psychiatrists to be available into the future.

There's a raft of other recommendations as part of that, which we have accepted and are working to implement as well, including about how we utilise other mental health professionals to the best of their scope of practice as well. I was able to meet with the College of Psychiatrists at their annual conference that they had recently at Glenelg. I understand I was the first ever health minister to present to that college at their annual conference here in South Australia, and I have to say that the college is absolutely excited by the potential to work together on implementing this plan, to see that realised and to see a future pipeline of psychiatrists for people who need mental health care in this state.