Remote Health Work­force Project Report: Shark Bay

This project was a pilot study under­tak­en by CRANAplus in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Sil­ver Chain Group based in Shark Bay in the Gas­coyne Region, West­ern Australia.

The over­all aim was to pro­vide a com­pre­hen­sive under­stand­ing of the diver­si­ty and unique char­ac­ter­is­tics of remote health, in recog­ni­tion of the lim­it­ed data, which reflects the pri­ma­ry health care activ­i­ties and occa­sions of ser­vice pro­vid­ed across remote Aus­tralia. Specif­i­cal­ly, we endeav­oured to cap­ture the occa­sions of care deliv­ered by Nurs­es in a remote set­ting con­text. Shark Bay has a Nurse Practitioner/​Remote Area Nurse ser­vice model.

The project result­ed in a data col­lec­tion tool and process to col­lect occa­sions of ser­vice encom­pass­ing direct and non-direct activ­i­ties. Feed­back report­ed it was ​‘easy to use and forms the basis of a con­sis­tent tax­on­o­my to be used across the sector.’

This was a small study but oppor­tu­ni­ties do exist to repli­cate, using the tools deliv­ered, in oth­er remote health care set­tings to assist with future ser­vice and work­force planning.

A spe­cial ​‘Thank You’ to Sil­ver Chain, for their col­lab­o­ra­tion with this Project, and would like to acknowl­edge two staff mem­bers Sandy Bell the Nurse Prac­ti­tion­er at Shark Bay, and Les­ley Pear­son, Region­al Man­ag­er for their con­tri­bu­tion to the study.