Tony Ryall

Wellington, Aug 6 NZPA - Health workforce planning will be more unified with the establishment of a national training board, Health Minister Tony Ryall said today.

The Clinical Training Agency Board will be led by Auckland University School of Medicine head Professor Des Gorman and will work with the minister to rationalise health workforce training funding and planning.

"We've inherited disjointed and uncoordinated resources in the health sector attempting to deal with serious and longstanding workforce issues," Mr Ryall said.

"A raft of health workforce reports over the years have been critical of this duplication and called for a co-ordinated national response to workforce issues. This is what we are again doing."

The board announcement came as Mr Ryall released four reports which concluded the health workforce status quo was untenable.

"The reports agree we need one single agency to ensure co-ordination of workforce training, planning and funding as nurses and doctors and other health professionals move along their career continuum in the public health system."

The country's 21 district health boards (DHBs) welcomed the release of the reports; the Medical Training Board, the Resident Medical Officers' (RMO) Commission, the Ministerial Task Group on Postgraduate Training and Education and a Nursing workforce review.

DHBs chairs' board of governance spokesman Peter Glensor said the reports provided invaluable information about the health workforce. He particularly welcomed the emphasis placed on training and mentoring in the RMO Commission report.

"The apprenticeship model of learning that underpins medical training has been eroded by a range of complex factors over the course of many years, and the priority now is to restore the emphasis on learning," he said.

"The commission is clear that we must change the way we train our doctors, and that we must begin now."

DHBs would engage locally via roadshows and other mechanisms to discuss the reports and confirm clinicians' views on the directions and options for the medical workforce.