NATION Health, education in bush staff crisis
QUEE NS L A ND’ S c o u n t r y towns are facing a health and education crisis with many communities unable to attract trained professionals including doctors, dentists, teachers, police and social workers.
Industry leaders are battling to bring highly skilled workers to the bush, as Regional Australia Institute figures show the service gap is widening, as just 5 per cent of small towns have access to a dentist, 18 per cent have a GP and 6 per cent a psychologist.
During the study measuring service availability between 1981 and 2011, researchers found significant service declines in Queensland towns.
In Childers, the number of registered nurses fell from 10 to three – a 70 per cent drop – while the number of primary school teachers fell 75 per cent to 65 per cent lower than the national average and GP numbers dropped by 40 per cent.
In Tully, the number of registered nurses dropped from 18 to eight, a 56 per cent drop and 65 per cent lower than the national average.
The number of primary school teachers fell from 20 to nine, 40 per cent lower than the national average per capita, while secondary teacher numbers fell by 50 per cent; while in Winton nurse numbers fell 37 per cent to 12, the number of secondary teachers dropped by 38 per cent and police numbers halved.
Researchers estimated a lack of access to GPs, dentists and other health services in rural and remote areas across Australia resulted in 60,000 preventable hospital admissions each year.
South West Hospital and Health Service Executive Director Medical Services Dr Chris Buck said that a major hurdle was making sure train- ees had enough supervision, capitalising on a “tsunami of medical graduates”. “The problem is that in order to gain that training, they need they have to be mentored and actually have appropriate supervision,” he said.
Social researcher Mark McCrindle said the lifestyle gap between capitals and the regions was “bigger than ever before”, with people now having higher expectations of the community they lived in.