The People and Culture Award recognises projects that support our workforce to deliver safe, reliable, person-centred care that drives the best outcomes and experience for patients and staff.
Projects in this category demonstrates support the NSW Health workforce by:
In regional areas of NSW, General Practitioners (GPs) play a crucial role in providing both primary and hospital health care. The number of GPs in rural areas has been declining. This has led to patients waiting longer for appointments or not being able to find a GP for their care needs.
The Murrumbidgee Model was designed to address these challenges. The program aims to attract, train, retain, and support rural generalist doctors who work in the local health district.
The Murrumbidgee Single Employer Model is a 4-year pilot project with the Australian Government that began in 2021. This pathway provides trainees with certainty. Trainees know where they'll work, how much they'll earn, and their working conditions.
The pathway focuses on supporting rural GPs to develop the advanced skills needed for rural hospitals and is expanding the rural medical workforce by offering a personalised and coordinated pathway for GP trainees.
The Murrumbidgee Model pathway offers a proactive, practical, and ongoing recruitment and training approach. This ensures that communities have the right doctors with the right skills in the right places. Trainees are guaranteed employment during their training program, which eliminates the differences between GP trainees and specialist trainees working in public hospitals.
The Leadership Academy is an interactive online leadership development gateway, created specifically for unit managers in Northern NSW Local Health District. The Academy was informed by an in-depth study exploring the support, education and resource needs of our unit managers.
This initiative is a first for NSW Health. It aims to create an engaged network of unit managers who would be fully equipped and supported to lead effective, productive and agile clinical teams.
The Leadership Academy successfully addressed several issues:
A multi-method evaluation has indicated that the Academy has met and surpassed the needs of the unit manager cohort. Feedback indicates that the program:
The Wellbeing Workshop is a program designed to support NSW Ambulance staff be well, safe and protected at work. The workshop provides employees with the knowledge, capabilities and support for them to take charge of their mental and physical health.
The team developed a suite of knowledge, strategies and tools, which help employees manage their:
Workshops ran over three days in Sydney for operational employees, and 1 1/4 days for nonoperational employees. The workshop also offers networking, and peer support opportunities.
Between 2018 and 2023:
The workshop is a staple in new employees inductions and has been adapted into an online refresher.
Post-workshop surveys show strong staff support with 84% of employees noting a positive change in their wellbeing. Similarly, 84% of staff said that they feel more confident in their professional judgement being well, safe and protected. These strong results have drawn attention of emergency and ambulance services around the country seeking tools to improve employee wellbeing.
Culture improvement programs are not new, and there are many ways to implement culture frameworks. The difference with this program was proving that culture improvement can be done virtually, as a team, in a very complex and often chaotic shared service workplace.
A series of Cultural Improvement workshops were held in 2022. Prior to these workshops, Digital Health were underperforming on the People Matters Employment Survey (PMES) results compared to their peers. They circulated expressions of interests for volunteers to review their historical PMES results. A group of diverse individuals were recruited and developed actions in response to feedback from these surveys. The team openly discussed their shortcomings and planned to rectify these in monthly all-staff virtual townhall meetings.
The success of this program was showcased by before and after PMES results. This resulted in the largest net engagement increase across the entire South Eastern Sydney Local Health District. A total of 14% increase year on year.
Examples included:
