Dr Clare Ramsden is the Executive Director of Allied Health at Hospitals South in the Tasmanian Health Service. Her role encompasses both operational and professional leadership responsibilities, working alongside the Executive Director of Medical Services and the Executive Director of Nursing and Midwifery to ensure high quality professional standards across the workforce.
Allied Health Services at Hospitals South covers ten disciplines, including occupational therapy, physiotherapy, social work, podiatry, psychology, nutrition, dietetics, speech pathology, audiology, orthotics, prosthetics, and chaplaincy. These disciplines report operationally to the Executive Director of Allied Health, providing services across the full spectrum of care provided at Hospitals South, from emergency department care to outpatient and community-based services.
One notable program run by Hospitals South is the ABLE program, or Allied Health Building Leadership Experience. This program was created to address the challenge of allied health professionals being seen as a single entity, rather than as individual disciplines, when it comes to leadership and management opportunities. The program is delivered entirely internally, with seminars presented by senior staff and mentorship opportunities for participants to become more effective representatives of allied health in meetings and working groups.
Allied Health Services at Hospitals South is known for its dynamic workplace culture, which emphasises collaboration, creativity, and enthusiasm for providing high-quality care to the community. While productivity is important, there is no single measure that works for all of the different disciplines involved in Allied Health Services. The focus is on delivering efficient, appropriate, and high-quality care in a collaborative model that includes nursing and medicine as well.
According to Dr Ramsden, Hospitals South provides an opportunity to gain a breadth of experience for new graduates, which they might not get in larger hospitals. The hospital offers allied health representation roles, mentoring roles, and leadership roles. With almost 20 years of experience in allied health, Dr Clare Ramsden has been able to work in different countries, engage in research, and gauge quality improvement. She believes that allied health provides a broad career for people interested in any aspect of health service provision. Hospitals South strives to offer opportunities for allied health services to staff, enabling them to make the most of their interests, whether in clinical leadership, management and formal leadership, education and training, workforce development, or quality improvement.
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More health care volunteers needed for Street Side Medics
Identifying a gap in the healthcare of vulnerable people in New South Wales, Dr Daniel Nour founded Street Side Medics in August 2020, a not-for-profit, GP-led mobile medical service for people experiencing homelessness.
Dr. Daniel Nour is a cardiology advanced trainee at Royal North Shore Hospital and the founder of Street Side Medics, a mobile medical service dedicated to providing GP-led care to individuals experiencing homelessness. The initiative started from a customised van, which serves as a medical clinic, visiting food services and shelters across New South Wales and recently Victoria. Street Side Medics offers free medical care without requiring documentation, ID, or a Medicare card.
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Professor Jeffrey Braithwaite on patient safety and health systems improvement
Professor Jeffrey Braithwaite is Founding Director of the Australian Institute of Health Innovation, Director of the Centre for Healthcare Resilience and Implementation Science and Professor of Health Systems Research at Macquarie University.
Professor Jeffrey Braithwaite is a leading health services and systems researcher with an international reputation for his work investigating and contributing to systems improvement.
The Australian Healthcare and Hospitals Association (AHHA) recently announced it will award the 2021 Sidney Sax medal for outstanding contributions to the development and improvement of Australia’s healthcare system to Professor Jeffrey Braithwaite.
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Physiotherapist, exercise physiologist support for management of osteoporosis
Osteoporosis is commonly managed medically and typically with treatment. Exercise is also essential in the management of osteoporosis but tends to be under-utilised due to lack of knowledge and unfounded concerns about the risk of injury. In fact, optimal care of people with low bone mass, osteoporosis and/or increased risk of falling can and should include targeted exercise to help prevent osteoporotic fracture.
In early 2024, Healthy Bones Australia released a summary of the principles of osteogenic loading and fall prevention, the translation of those principles into clinical practice, evidence-based recommendations for exercise prescription, and special considerations, along with links to several relevant resources for people with or at risk of osteoporosis, falls and fractures.
