Occupational Therapists want action LUCAS DIGNEY
HACSU Assistant State Secretary OCCUPATIONAL Therapists help us learn new ways of doing things, regain lost skills and develop new ones.
They help us use materials or equipment that makes life easier, or adapts our environment to work better for us. These solutions help us to do as much as we can – safely and effectively – at home, at school, at work or in other settings.
Occupational Therapists are health care professionals who help us resume or maintain participation in a variety of tasks – career, leisure, social activities, being mobile, caring for ourselves and our home, and much more. In northern Tasmania, services have been reduced markedly or in some cases totally withdrawn simply because there's been an
inability to recruit appropriately experienced OTs to undertake the supervision of those services in these vital areas. HACSU OT members kicked off a community campaign in June that highlights the essential value of their services and the additional cost to the community when there's not enough of them.
For at least two years they've been warning of the real threat to health services because of a recruitment and retention problem in Tasmania. Since the commencement of the campaign members have talked to the media and supported patients and their families to do the same. They've taken steps to publicly advertise the issue and to demand the government take real and measurable action to address this issue.
community, but we’re not done.
The department has agreed to a targeted recruitment campaign and to recruit in a way that allows the ongoing turnover to be covered, but we’re still fighting to see the number of OTs increased in line with at least the national average.
Our members will soon meet with the Health Minister Jeremy Rockliff to tell him about the real problem that an inability to address this issue has created.
We’re hopeful the additional health funding in the budget will be allocated to address the chronic shortfall that began when the health budget was slashed and burned in 2011.
The campaign has seen several commitments made and some real wins for HACSU members and the
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