title: The Queensland Health Ministerial Taskforce on health practitioners' expanded scope of practice: consultation findings.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Queensland Health established a Ministerial Taskforce to consult on and make recommendations for the expansion of the scope ofpractice of allied health roles. This paper describes the findings from the stakeholder consultation.
  
  
  METHODS
  The Ministerial Taskforce was chaired by the Assistant Minister for Health and included high-level representation from allied health, nursing, medicine, unions, consumers and universities. Widespread engagement was undertaken with stakeholders representing staff from a wide cross-section of health service provision, training and unions. Participants also tendered evidence of models incorporating full-scope and extended scope tasks undertaken by allied health professionals.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The consultation incorporated 444 written submissions and verbal feedback from over 200 participants. The findings suggest that full scope of practice is often restricted within the Queensland public health system, resulting in underuse of allied health capacity and workforce inefficiencies. However, numerous opportunities exist to enhance patient care by extending current roles, including prescribing and administering medications, requesting investigations, conducting procedures and reporting results. The support needed to realise these opportunities includes: designing patient-centred models of service delivery (including better hours of operation and delegation to support staff); leadership and culture change; funding incentives; appropriate education and training; and clarifying responsibility, accountability and liability for outcomes. The taskforce developed a series of recommendations and an implementation strategy to operationalise the changes.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The Ministerial Taskforce was an effective and efficient process for capturing broad-based engagement for workforce change while ensuring high-level support and involving potential adversaries in the decision-mking processes. What is known about the topic? Anecdotal evidence exists to suggest that allied health professionals do not work to their full scope of practice and there is potential to enhance health service efficiencies by ensuring practitioners are supported to work to their full scope of practice. What does this paper add? This paper presents the findings from a large-scale consultation, endorsed by the highest level of state government, that reinforces the perceptions that allied health professionals do not work to full scope of practice, identifies several barriers to working to full scope and extended scope of practice, and opportunities for workforce efficiencies arising from expanding scope of practice. The top-down engagement process should expedite the implementation of workforce change. What are the implications for practitioners? High-level engagement and support is an effective and efficient way to broker change and overcome intraprofessional barriers to workforce change policies. However, practitioners are often prevented from expanding their roles through an implied need to 'ask for permission', when, in fact, the only barriers to extending their role are culture and historical practice.
authors.affiliation: Young Futures, Kilkivan Avenue, Kenmore, Qld 4069, Australia. Email.
authors.forename: Gretchen
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Young
authors.affiliation: Allied Health Professions Office of Queensland, Department of Health, Qld 4000, Australia. Email:.
authors.forename: Julie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Hulcombe
authors.affiliation: Allied Health Professions Office of Queensland, Department of Health, Qld 4000, Australia. Email:.
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Hurwood
authors.affiliation: School of Health and Human Sciences, Southern Cross University, Lismore, NSW 2480, Australia.
authors.forename: Susan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Nancarrow
mesh_terms: D026683:Advisory Committees; D000488:Allied Health Personnel; D017144:Focus Groups; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D024382:Professional Role; D011634:Public Health; D036301:Qualitative Research; D011793:Queensland; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires