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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2022-10-20 Daily Xml
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Regional Palliative Care Workforce

The Hon. A. PICCOLO (Light) (14:19): My question is to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing. Can the minister update the house on the status of the regional palliative care workforce?

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:19): I thank the member for Light for his question. I acknowledge his very deep interest in palliative care in South Australia. This is something where we do know that more work needs to be done because there is clearly a disparity in terms of access for good quality palliative care, particularly when it comes to regional South Australia.

The work that our palliative care nurses do right across South Australia is absolutely amazing. They help families in very difficult circumstances and make sure people have dignity in their final hours and days, but they are, in many places, run off their feet. It was raised time and time again with us before the election that palliative care needed additional investment and additional help.

As part of our election commitments in relation to the 300 additional nurses that we committed to, we had an allocation of that for 10 additional nurses specifically for palliative care, to help those palliative care teams right across South Australia. Since coming to office, we have undertaken further consultation, we have been working with the Palliative Care Clinical Network and we have been working with teams across SA Health to identify the best area of need for those palliative care nurses.

What was very apparent was making sure that we can allocate those extra positions in regional areas. This is clearly where we need to have the biggest impact in terms of where there is discrepancy in people's ability to get palliative care at the moment. Currently, there are 22 nurses who work across palliative care in regional South Australia. We will now increase that by 10 additional nurses, so that's a 45 per cent increase in the palliative care nursing workforce across South Australia.

I can announce today where those are going to be allocated. There will be an additional 3½ FTE going into the Barossa Hills Fleurieu district, which the member, obviously, in his electorate representing Gawler will be very interested in. There are going to be two additional FTE of palliative care nurses going both into Eyre and Far North and into the Riverland Mallee Coorong local health networks. It's particularly worth noting that in the Eyre and Far North at the moment there is only 1.3 FTE for palliative care nurses, so that is going to be more than doubling their allocation of nurses there. There is also going to be one extra palliative care nurse going into Flinders and Upper North, one extra into Yorke and Northern, and half an FTE going into Limestone Coast.

That tries to get equality in terms of the allocation of palliative care nurses across regional South Australia. This is going to be important for so many families. It's also going to help reduce pressure on hospitals, because we know a lot of the research points to the fact that many South Australians would prefer to receive their palliative care and die at home, but that's not available for many people, particularly with these workforce issues.

Particularly, I would like to highlight that one of those palliative care nurses is going to be allocated to the south coast, out of the Barossa Hills Fleurieu. This is an area that was raised with me in opposition. I went to a very well-attended forum in Victor Harbor—I think I was the only member of parliament who was at this forum—and heard from people about the issues they are facing. Having that growing population, an additional palliative care nurse is going to be particularly important.

I think it will also be of interest to the member for Stuart and the member for Giles that one of those palliative care nurses will be working between Whyalla and Port Augusta as well. This is an excellent announcement. It's going to improve care for many, many South Australians.

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