Fund tertiary education providers appropriately
A quality health system relies on highly trained professionals. Tertiary education organisations provide a vital service by educating our future health workforce, and expanding the skillset of our current practitioners.
Education in the clinical health sciences is expensive to deliver. Technological advancements have changed the scope of practice and significantly increased the cost of education for many allied health disciplines, including paramedicine, perioperative practice, and oral health, and other associated professions, including medical laboratory science. However, the level of SAC funding currently available is insufficient. In some of these cases, it reflects an outdated model of training, and in all it is out of step with the responsibilities and competencies expected of a modern health graduate.
Why the contribution is important
Insufficient funding places significant pressure on providers of health science education. They need to remain abreast of technological advances and changes in the scope of practice, both of which can come with a significant cost. It also limits their ability to expand programmes to meet student and workforce demand.
by Helen_AUT on November 03, 2022 at 02:25PM
Posted by SteveYork November 08, 2022 at 13:44
Educate and train students closer to their home, in their home or within their communities, rather than in costly maintained buildings in metropolitan areas with high costs of living. Not all lectures and training has to be done in front of a whiteboard, using office furniture, on a campus, in a city and 100s of kilometres from support networks.
If education is expensive to deliver as it is, maybe it is an outdated model of training. Similar to health services.....deliver education to meet the needs of what the students want and that is usually closer to their home. It may then become less expensive for all concerned, whilst achieving the same outcomes.
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Posted by mdsnz November 18, 2022 at 12:52
Indeed the Productivity Commission 2017 report raised this issue, that tertiary education is typically delivered on-campus, to school leavers in full-time programmes disadvantaging many groups in accessing tertiary education which is the gateway to training to be a healthcare professional in most instances. If COVID showed us anything is that other modes of delivery are possible.
Yet, to look at the approval process to establish a new programme and a new PTO to deliver it yields a bureaucratic structure geared toward a bricks and mortar, whiteboard delivery model. The crumbling of the university and polytech sectors dictates an urgent review of thedelievery and funding models, fo the sake of the healthcare sector and professions that require it to deliever people to met pop
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Posted by mdsnz November 18, 2022 at 12:53
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