title: Generalism workforce planning. Definitional, pragmatic and transformational issues.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Generalist primary care medical practitioners have been the cornerstone of healthcare systems through general practice. Internationally and within Australia, calls to strengthen generalist primary care medical practice have increased with the ever growing burden on the health system from the demand and workforce sides. Professional bodies have called for further work to quantify and predict generalist workforce requirements and distribution as a matter of urgency. Despite recent Australian health workforce planning analysis and modelling predicting workforce number requirements, definitional, pragmatic and transformational issues confront generalism workforce planning.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  This article describes the challenges involved in generalist workforce planning and suggests potential solutions.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  We argue for a generalist workforce capability-based model that seeks to identify how to prepare, support and sustain core capabilities required for generalists to ensure team-based primary care is safe and effective within and across sectors and settings.
authors.affiliation: BSc (Psych), GradDipMHS, PhD, NHMRC Postdoctoral Training Fellowship and Senior Research Fellow, The Australian Health Workforce Institute, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne, Victoria.
authors.forename: Lucio
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Naccarella
mesh_terms: D001315:Australia; D057191:Capacity Building; D058006:General Practice / Q000458:organization & administration / Q000639:trends; D006285:Health Planning; D006301:Health Services Needs and Demand; D017146:Models, Organizational; D011320:Primary Health Care / Q000458:organization & administration / Q000639:trends; D000078329:Workforce