Developing a Manager's Toolkit for rural and remote health services

Dr Leigh-ann Onnis, a Fellow of The Cairns Institute, has been researching health workforce sustainability in rural and remote northern Australia for more than ten years. With many businesses in north Queensland experiencing workforce shortages, industries that traditionally face recruitment challenges and high turnover are looking for innovative approaches to workforce retention. Dr Onnis is working with human resources (HR) professionals and health service managers to identify management solutions tailored to the specific needs of their health services.

In 2023, Dr Onnis and Tahalani Hunter, both from JCU’s College of Business, Law and Governance started working with North and West Remote Health’s HR Manager, Trina Matthews, on a research project aiming to improve remote health workforce sustainability through evidenced-based workforce interventions that can be tailored to meet the needs of individual health services. This industry collaboration is supported by research project seed funding from the Centre for Research Excellence for Strengthening Systems for Indigenous Health Care Equity (CRE-STRIDE).
Over the past few months, the research team have been examining workforce interventions that have been implemented and evaluated to identify interventions that have shown promise for improving health workforce retention. The study has identified several promising practices (e.g. programs or interventions that show signs of being effective for improving workforce retention) but there were few implemented or evaluated in rural and remote Australian health services.

The scarcity of evidence about interventions that work in this context prompted the research team to develop a Manager’s Toolkit of promising practices which will provide guidance and resources for managers working in rural and remote health services. Building on Dr Onnis’ previous research about remote health workforce sustainability the Manager’s Toolkit will focus on people, practice and place. This project also responds to a call for tailored management development and support for clinician-managers in rural and remote Australia.

For further information about the project, contact Dr Onnis on leighann.onnis@jcu.edu.au