CORONAVIRUS —
HEALTHCARE WORKFORCE
368. Hon JACQUI BOYDELL to the parliamentary secretary
representing the Minister for Health:
I refer to the health worker
recruitment campaign announced by the minister on 17 March 2020, with the first
recruitment focused on clinical staff.
(1) How many
staff have been successfully recruited through this campaign to date, and can
the minister please indicate how many have commenced their clinical position?
(2) Given the
highly successful flattening of the curve within Western Australia to date,
does the minister anticipate that the number of staff initially proposed will
still be required?
(3) Given that as of 17 April 2020 Rural Health West
still has 221 vacancies across regional Western Australia, would the government consider offering a redeployment
to any of these new recruits to ease staff shortages in regional WA?
Hon ALANNA
CLOHESY replied:
I thank the honourable member for
some notice of the question.
(1) To date, 791 applicants have
been recommended to the clinical recruitment pool.
(2) WA Health is
rapidly assessing all applications and appointing all suitable candidates into
a pool, from which they will be deployed when the surge occurs.
(3) The current
recruitment campaign requires the WA Country Health Service to assess all
applications received from regional WA via the recruitment drive to fill
vacancies in regional areas. Additionally, WACHS has been working with Rural
Health West in recruiting two regional positions.