Impact of Australian Health Workforce Policy on Person-centered care

Running Head: AUSTRALIAN HEALTH POLICY 1
Impact of Australian Health Workforce Policy on the Quality Person-centered care by the
Healthcare workforce;
Student’s name;
Date.

AUSTRALIAN HEALTH POLICY 2
Impact of Australian Health Workforce Policy on the Quality Person-centered care by the
Healthcare workforce.
According to Kitson et al., (2013) Person-centered care is a process whereby the health providers
select the method of offering treatment to patients based on the needs, characteristics, and values
of the specific patients. This, therefore, indicates that methods of delivering treatments to
patients should differ based on the location of the patient and the specific belief system of that
specific culture to ensure that the patient is at the center of healthcare, (Kitson, Marshall, Bassett
& Zeitz, 2013). One can, therefore, realize that person-centered care is one of the most important
aspects of healthcare and hence used as one of the major indicators of quality healthcare. This
paper discusses the various ways in which the Australian workforce policy affects the delivery of
person-centered care to Australian citizens by the Healthcare Workforce.
The major problem facing densely populated and developed counties such as Australia is
the uneven distribution of doctors across different geographical areas with a high number of
doctors in urban centers and few in rural centers, (Hibbard & Greene, 2013). This limits access
to primary care and medical care to individuals in rural areas. In curbing this, Australia has
implemented policies to solve this problem. One of the policies implemented by Australia in the
policy targeting the selection of medical students based on their location. This law is based on
the basis that students from rural areas are more likely to practice in the rural setting of their
origin as compared to students from urban centers who are more likely to practice in the urban
centers, (Hibbard & Greene, 2013). In this policy, the government has set a minimum number of
students that should be admitted to learning institutions as medical students.
In the first place, by enacting this law, the government has been able to increase the
number of doctors in most underserved areas especially rural areas, (Nolte & McKee, 2008). By
increasing the ration of doctors to the patients in this areas, patients have been able to receive
quality services from health centers. This move has also greatly improved on efficiency as