Palliative Care and End-of-Life Care: PI 01a-Number of health practitioners in specialist palliative care workforce, 2021
Identifying and definitional attributes | |
Metadata item type: | Indicator |
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| Indicator type: | Indicator |
| Short name: | PI 01a-Number of health practitioners in specialist palliative care workforce, 2021 |
| METEOR identifier: | 744815 |
| Registration status: |
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| Description: | Number of health practitioners with a speciality in palliative care, who work in a palliative care area or who work in a hospice setting (for the registered professions of medical practitioners and nurses). |
| Rationale: | According to the National Palliative Care Strategy 2018 (DoH 2019), workforce planning is an essential element in achieving functional and sustainable healthcare across the palliative care sector. Palliative care faces a range of challenges, including an increase in demand for services due to an ageing population and a decrease in ability to meet service demand due to the size of and changes in the palliative care workforce. An understanding of the characteristics of the workforce will assist in identifying current needs gaps and aid future planning. |
| Indicator set: | Palliative Care and End-of-Life Care Key Performance Indicators 2021 Health, Qualified 21/10/2021 |
Collection and usage attributes | |
| Computation description: | For this indicator, the workforce for each profession is defined as those employed in Australia in the profession, who specialise in or work in palliative care. This excludes those who are registered in the profession but are retired from regular work, working outside the profession, working in the profession but on extended leave of 3 months or more, who are only engaged in unpaid/volunteer work or working outside Australia. Number = number of health practitioners, for selected professions. Employed palliative medicine physicians include only practitioners whose main speciality is palliative care. This excludes practioners who practice palliative care as a second or third speciality, and does not include information on whether they are currently working in palliative care. Employed palliative care nurses include only nurses whose principal job area is palliative care, and does not include information on whether they have a speciality in palliative care. |
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| Computation: | Numerator only |
| Numerator: | Number of physicians and nurses in the workforce who specialise or primarily work in palliative care in the reference year. |
| Numerator data elements: | |
| Disaggregation: | Year (2015 - 2019), state and territory, age group, sex, Indigenous status, remoteness area, job role, job setting, by profession for the following professions:
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| Disaggregation data elements: | |
| Comments: | Reference period for 2021 reporting: 2019. The National Health Workforce Dataset was sourced from the Australian Government Department of Health. It is recognised that social workers, occupational therapists, physiotherapists and other allied health professionals form an integral part of the palliative care workforce; however, the current national data sources do not support their inclusion in this indicator. These professions will be added to the indicator as data becomes available. |
Representational attributes | |
| Representation class: | Count |
| Data type: | Real |
| Unit of measure: | Person |
| Format: | N[N(4)] |
Indicator conceptual framework | |
| Framework and dimensions: | 5. Accessibility |
Data source attributes | |
| Data sources: | |
Accountability attributes | |
| Organisation responsible for providing data: | Australian Government Department of Health |
| Other issues caveats: | The National Health Workforce Dataset was sourced from the Australian Government Department of Health. |
Source and reference attributes | |
| Reference documents: | Department of Health (DoH) 2019. National Palliative Care Strategy 2018. Canberra: DoH. Viewed 7 June 2021, https://www.health.gov.au/resources/publications/the-national-palliative-care-strategy-2018.
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