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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Success in WA pilot to observe babies showing delays in social interaction & communication development
Inklings – led by The Kids Research Institute Australia – is a program for babies aged 6-18 months whose communications skills are developing differently to expected milestones. In early 2025 it has completed the first year of a pilot program.
At the time of filming (Nov 2024), Inklings has received more then 300 enquiries across WA and started to deliver services to 160 children, with almost 60 who have completed the program.
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Primary care remodelled
Tracey Johnson is the CEO of Inala Primary Care, a not-for-profit general practice located in Inala serving approximately 7000 patients; 4400 of whom attend clinic regularly. Inala is a suburb of Brisbane, Queensland and has a population of great cultural and linguistic diversity, with just under 40% of residents speaking English at home. It is also one of Queensland’s most socioeconomically marginalised urban areas.
Australian Health Journal spoke with Tracey on the role of Inala Primary care in reducing hospital admissions.
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Australasian College of Paramedicine makes case for multi-disciplinary care
Despite being seen primarily as emergency responders, paramedics have long been providing care in the primary care space. As such, their increased involvement in primary and urgent care is a natural progression that can lead to improved health outcomes for communities. Urgent care clinics, which treat non-life-threatening injuries and illnesses, have been a recent introduction. However, when these clinics were initially proposed, paramedics were left out of the opportunity, despite being experts in urgent, acute, unplanned, and unscheduled care. They work in these types of situations every day in the ambulance service and should be utilised in these clinics to improve patient outcomes. Working as part of multidisciplinary teams with doctors and nurses can further enhance the outcomes for local communities.
