Workforce Insights: April 2025
Date published:
15 Apr 2025
In our 2025 RACP Election Statement we affirmed a simple but powerful truth: physician health and safety are essential to delivering high-quality care. That’s why, over the coming year, one of our key priorities is advocating for better working conditions and wellbeing support for our trainees and Fellows.
We’re currently developing several important documents that aim to make working conditions for members better and support your health and wellbeing.
These include:
- A guidance document, Improving the Health of Healthcare Workers
- A position statement, Value of Occupational and Environmental Medicine Physicians in Healthcare
- An information document, Moral Distress.
A heartfelt thank you to the dedicated Committee and Working Group members, including from the Australasian Faculty of Occupational and Environmental Medicine and the Ethics Committee, who have been involved with this work. We’re looking forward to sharing draft versions of these documents with you in the not-too-distant future, where we invite member feedback.
We've been working on your behalf with the National Doctors Health and Wellbeing Leadership Alliance and A Better Culture on profession-wide initiatives to improve doctors’ health and wellbeing and the culture of healthcare.
This includes implementation of the Every Doctor, Every Setting national framework and contributing to work on positive workplace culture, particularly in the context of the multitude of workforce pressures physicians and trainees are facing.
Key actions we're advocating for include:
- Chief Wellness Officer roles within Health Departments and hospitals
- Ahpra survey of wellbeing for all doctors, building on the existing Medical Training Survey
- Safe Work Australia to monitor and review hospital wellbeing risks and develop tools to reduce risks.
The shortage of doctors and other healthcare workers, long working hours, fatigue and burnout highlighted by doctors in NSW last week are indicative of wider health workforce and wellbeing issues across the country.
We are calling on federal, state and territory governments to work with us to improve physician and trainee wellbeing and healthy work arrangements, including through:
- strengthened capacity to train physicians to ensure access to healthcare across the community, including in rural and remote areas
- strategies for flexible training, work hours, parental leave and other support mechanisms for physicians and trainees
- ensuring sufficient, protected time to teach and supervise trainees
- investing in Chief Wellness Officers - paid clinical positions with health and wellbeing responsibilities.
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Welcome news for physicians in the recent Federal Budget, with a number of announcements reflecting our workforce advocacy on your behalf.
We’re pleased to see meaningful investment in areas that matter most to you and the communities you serve, including across medicines supply, digital health, First Nations healthcare and hospital funding. Find out more in our Federal Budget summary.
In the run up to the May election, see what we’re asking for by reading our 2025 Election Statement calling on all political parties and candidates to deliver the healthcare system Australia needs.
We want politicians to grow and support the physician workforce, improve access to medicines and deliver better Medicare for all. We’re also prioritising prevention, equitable care for key patient groups and the climate resilience of the healthcare system.
The Statement has been shared with key Members of Parliament. You can play a powerful role too. Please use the Statement to support conversations with political leaders and help shape the future of healthcare in Australia.
Specialist and consultant physician claiming, particularly for attendance and management plan items such as 132 and 133, are going to be monitored by the Commonwealth Department of Health and Aged Care over the next 12 months to ensure correct claiming.
The Department has released its 2025 compliance priorities, outlining the key areas it will monitor. We continue talking with both Medicare and the Professional Services Review to ensure the nuances of your practice are adequately considered.
We’re also asking for practitioner-centred tools and resources that help reduce compliance issues before they arise, along with better support for physician wellbeing during PSR review processes.
Trainees and Fellows working in community clinics need more than clinical expertise to deliver quality care – they also need the right administrative support.
In our contribution to the Aotearoa New Zealand Budget Policy Statement, the RACP raised concerns our members face about reduced administrative support in public clinics. We emphasised the need for sufficient funding to support a wide range of ‘labour intensive’ services across inpatient and community settings.
Medication shortages continue causing real concern across the healthcare system, and we are advocating for practical, long-term solutions.
We’ve been engaging closely with the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), most recently through our submission and by joining a key working group focused on addressing this critical issue.
Our message is clear: Australia needs better, more effective ways to manage, and ultimately reduce, medication shortages. This is a vital part of ensuring patients can access the care they need, when they need it.
We’ve made sure the new Queensland Government knows the RACP. In February we met the Queensland Minister for Health, the Hon Tim Nicholls, in Brisbane to provide our perspective on workforce, wellbeing, and other priorities.
We urged the Queensland Government to provide junior doctors with rural and remote medicine experience, attractive training, stimulating career opportunities, and quality professional development opportunities.
Some of the key topics we advocated for include:
- effective and flexible attraction and retention strategies
- increased resourcing for publicly funded clinics
- better access to specialist neurodevelopmental assessment for children
- better access to geriatric medical and psychogeriatric services.
Workforce is a shared priority area for the RACP as well as the new Minister, and we highlighted the need for protected teaching and learning time.
We also conveyed the challenges of rising demand for clinical care, and the stresses that puts on medical education. The Minister acknowledged these concerns, and indicated his awareness of the various non-clinical physician duties such as leadership, research, mentoring, and administration.
The Minister also used the meeting to brief us on the government’s intention to proceed with the announced capital works program across the healthcare portfolio, despite at a reduced pace.
One of the reasons we engage with health ministers and governments is to establish itself as a leading authority on healthcare, providing expert advice and advocating for the issues most important to you.
In February, representatives of RACP’s Tasmanian Committee met with the Tasmanian Minister for Health, the Hon Jacquie Petrusma, to discuss critical concerns about the physician and trainee workforce, their wellbeing and to advocate for improved access to health services for priority populations.
Key matters discussed included the paediatric workforce shortages in North West Tasmania, as well as within the broader paediatric neurodevelopmental specialty. These shortages are having a significant impact on both patients and the wider community, making it an urgent issue for healthcare providers and policymakers.
Another major topic addressed was the challenges facing trainee physicians. This included instability caused by short-term contracts, the unfilled Basic Physician Training (BPT) positions at Launceston General Hospital, and the excessive delays in obtaining approvals for trainee research projects. These issues are affecting the ability of trainees to progress in their careers and contribute to the healthcare system effectively.
The Minister committed to continued engagement with the RACP Tasmanian Committee on these and other issues and invited the committee representatives to meet with her again. Plans are also underway for the Minister to attend an upcoming RACP Tasmanian Committee meeting signalling a commitment to sustained dialogue and progress on these vital healthcare matters.
In the leadup to the Western Australian State Election, we released our Western Australia Election Statement. We called on political parties and leaders in Western Australia to commit to supporting the physician workforce. They need to meet growing healthcare needs, growing the physician workforce – particularly the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander physician workforce – and to take action to attract and retain trainees and Fellows in Western Australia.
We've called for tailored solutions to address low numbers of physicians in specific specialties and locations in Western Australia. We also called on the incoming government to foster a culture of health and wellbeing for trainees and Fellows to maintain the sustainable delivery of healthcare.
