Media Release
April 29 2010
Indigenous health initiative fills 400 health professional placements
The Remote Area Health Corps (RAHC) has filled over 400 short-term health professional placements in remote Indigenous communities across the Northern Territory (NT) in less than 18 months of operations.
Since it was established in late 2008, RAHC has made a significant contribution to supporting and expanding the health workforce in remote Indigenous communities in the NT by recruiting urban-based health professionals, including general practitioners, registered nurses and midwives, dental health and allied health professionals for short-term assignments in primary health settings throughout the NT.
RAHC General Manager, Dr Lisa Studdert says reaching this new milestone is testament to the passion many health professionals have had to join RAHC and help ‘close the gap’ between Indigenous and non-Indigenous health outcomes.
“Our RAHC health professionals are providing support to the hard working permanent staff in these remote health centres, filling gaps while long-term recruitment is underway and helping expand service delivery in areas such as preventive health and chronic disease management.”
“We believe that the success of the program to date can be attributed to our extensive pre-deployment screening procedures, the high quality cultural and clinical orientation programs we provide prior to health professionals beginning an assignment and the in-situ support from RAHC staff throughout placements.”
RAHC and the health services are also benefitting from a growing number of dedicated health professionals who are doing multiple placements through RAHC.
“Over a third of our placements are now health professionals who have already done one, and in many cases many, placements through RAHC. Their experience and ability to quickly integrate into a new setting is of great value and appreciated by all,” says, Dr Studdert.
RAHC’s 400th health professional placement is Kate Marshall, a registered nurse from Sydney. Kate is one of RAHC’s most regular employees with six other placements already under her belt prior to commencing her current 8 week placement in Mutitjulu near Uluru in Central Australia. Kate has previously worked in Santa Teresa, Elliott and Ali Curing.
