❓ The Minister for Health reports on the success of a trial program aimed at reducing ambulance diversion and ramping at hospital emergency departments during winter, highlighting significant improvements and ongoing initiatives.
AnsweredQoN 781Legislative Assembly
QuestionView source ↗
HOSPITAL EMERGENCY DEPARTMENTS - WINTER MONTHS
Now that winter is effectively over, can the minister update the house on how our hospital emergency departments coped during those traditionally busy months? Mr J.A. McGINTY
Now that winter is effectively over, can the minister update the house on how our hospital emergency departments coped during those traditionally busy months? Mr J.A. McGINTY
AnswerView source ↗
Mr Speaker - Several members interjected. The SPEAKER : Order, members! Mr J.A. McGINTY : I thank the member for Perth for his ongoing interest in emergency management. I take this opportunity to congratulate four groups of people - the doctors who work in our emergency departments, the nurses who work in our emergency departments, the St John Ambulance Association, and the administration of our public hospitals - for what has been a resounding success during the 12-week trial in our emergency departments. The trial was designed to eliminate, or at least significantly reduce, the incidence of ambulance diversion and ramping at the period of peak demand in our emergency departments. The trial commenced on 10 July. It was such a success that it has been extended for a further eight weeks until 26 November. I am very pleased to report to the house that the trial resulted in zero episodes of ambulance diversion at the tertiary hospitals. That is quite a remarkable achievement. Between July and October last year - in other words, the peak winter months - the three major hospital emergency departments spent 123 hours on diversion. This year they did not spend one second on ambulance diversion, which is a great success. Several members interjected. Mr J.A. McGINTY : Why do members opposite not like the fact that things are going well? Members opposite are such a miserable mob. Even though the government has eliminated ambulance diversions from our teaching hospital emergency departments, those opposite are whingeing! Look at them all. They should join with me in celebrating a great success and pat our doctors, nurses and ambulance service on the back for the great job that they have done. Mr T. Buswell : What about the orderlies who push patients around the corridors all day? Mr J.A. McGINTY : I really feel sorry for members opposite. I hope that they stay in opposition for a long time, because that is their rightful position. The second thing that emerged from this very important trial, which was initiated by the emergency departments themselves, was a 77 per cent reduction in the frequency of ambulance ramping from 57 hours last year to 12.85 hours this year for the comparable period. Ambulance ramping is when an ambulance is at a hospital for longer than 20 minutes after it has brought in a patient. One of the mechanisms used by the doctors and nurses in the emergency departments is what is referred to as ward over-census policy, which effectively creates temporary additional capacity on the wards to enable the emergency department to move admitted patients to the wards in anticipation of a patient discharge at times of peak demand. This is a great example of our very dedicated staff working in the emergency departments coming together for the good of patients. I table the report entitled “‘No ramping/No Diversion’ Trial Final Report”. [See paper 2146]. Mr J.A. McGINTY : I will briefly refer to a further five initiatives that have been undertaken to ease the pressure on our emergency departments. Firstly, six after-hours GP clinics have been established in conjunction with the emergency departments at our hospitals. So far this year those six GP clinics have treated 27 000 people, people who would have otherwise sought medical treatment from hospital emergency departments. This has freed up the capacity of emergency departments to deal with more seriously ill and injured patients. Second, the hospital in the home program is expanding dramatically to enable people, particularly those with chronic diseases, to be treated at home so that they do not require an expensive inpatient bed. Third, we have employed extra mental health staff to work in the emergency departments. Fourth, we have dedicated beds in most of our emergency departments to cater for people with chronic mental illnesses. Finally, we have increased the number of mental health beds. When the current program is complete, there will be an extra 108 acute beds and 400 community beds. Dr J.M. Woollard interjected. Mr J.A. McGINTY : Member for Alfred Cove, the good news is that since we came to government in 2001, we have increased the number of full - time equivalent nurses to almost 2 000. Since coming to government, we have employed 1 900 extra full - time equivalent nurses. The employment of so many extra nurses has enabled us to cope so much better. PHYSIOTHERAPISTS ACT 2005 - REGISTRATION OF GRADUATES OF UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME AUSTRALIA 2. Mr T.K. WALDRON to the Minister for Health: I will ask this question with a bit more enthusiasm than the member who asked the previous question! I refer to the delay in the accreditation of the first batch of physiotherapy graduates from the University of Notre Dame Australia by the Australian Physiotherapy Council. (1) Does the minister agree that this delay has resulted in those graduates being unable to work as physiotherapists unless they are given conditional or provisional classes of registration under the Physiotherapists Act? (2) Does the minister agree that until the Physiotherapists Act 2005 is proclaimed, there is no legal clause to allow graduates to attain conditional or provisional registration to work? (3) How long will it take for the legal and legislative services division of the Western Australian Department of Health to complete the regulations and for the act to be proclaimed; and, what is the minister doing to expedite the proclamation of the Physiotherapists Act 2005? Mr J.A. McGINTY replied: I thank member for Wagin for some notice of this question and for his enthusiasm for physiotherapy and manipulation! (1) - (3) The University of Notre Dame Australia applied for accreditation for its physiotherapy course in August this year. This is where the problem arose. It normally takes about six months to accredit a course of this nature. The application came in very late, given that the current batch of graduates completed their course at the end of September. Effectively, the application for accreditation of the course was made only one month prior to the students’ graduation. I do not want to make any criticisms; it just happened that way. The Physiotherapists Registration Board of Western Australia cannot recognise this qualification from the University of Notre Dame for the purposes of registration until such time as it is an accredited course. The current physiotherapy legislation makes no provision for any provisional or conditional registrations of physiotherapists. Fortunately, last year this Parliament passed the Physiotherapists Act 2005, which provides for the provisional and conditional registration of physiotherapists. That power will come into effect after the act is proclaimed. The act has not been proclaimed because the regulations have not been drafted. In recent days I signed off on the drafting instructions for the regulations to accompany that act. Now that we have discovered that there is a problem for the graduates of the University of Notre Dame, I have instructed the Department of Health to give top priority to this matter and to move with expedition to draft the regulations. It has advised me that the first draft of those regulations should be ready within a week or two. I will give this issue top priority to ensure that the regulations are promulgated as soon as possible. That will enable the act to be proclaimed, and the new board will be given the power to grant conditional or provisional registration to the UND graduates to enable them to practise. It is my hope that that process will be completed within a matter of weeks, rather than months. I thank the member for drawing this matter to my attention. It will receive urgent consideration.
Mr J.A. McGINTY replied: Mr Speaker - Several members interjected. The SPEAKER : Order, members! Mr J.A. McGINTY : I thank the member for Perth for his ongoing interest in emergency management. I take this opportunity to congratulate four groups of people - the doctors who work in our emergency departments, the nurses who work in our emergency departments, the St John Ambulance Association, and the administration of our public hospitals - for what has been a resounding success during the 12-week trial in our emergency departments. The trial was designed to eliminate, or at least significantly reduce, the incidence of ambulance diversion and ramping at the period of peak demand in our emergency departments. The trial commenced on 10 July. It was such a success that it has been extended for a further eight weeks until 26 November. I am very pleased to report to the house that the trial resulted in zero episodes of ambulance diversion at the tertiary hospitals. That is quite a remarkable achievement. Between July and October last year - in other words, the peak winter months - the three major hospital emergency departments spent 123 hours on diversion. This year they did not spend one second on ambulance diversion, which is a great success. Several members interjected. Mr J.A. McGINTY : Why do members opposite not like the fact that things are going well? Members opposite are such a miserable mob. Even though the government has eliminated ambulance diversions from our teaching hospital emergency departments, those opposite are whingeing! Look at them all. They should join with me in celebrating a great success and pat our doctors, nurses and ambulance service on the back for the great job that they have done. Mr T. Buswell : What about the orderlies who push patients around the corridors all day? Mr J.A. McGINTY : I really feel sorry for members opposite. I hope that they stay in opposition for a long time, because that is their rightful position. The second thing that emerged from this very important trial, which was initiated by the emergency departments themselves, was a 77 per cent reduction in the frequency of ambulance ramping from 57 hours last year to 12.85 hours this year for the comparable period. Ambulance ramping is when an ambulance is at a hospital for longer than 20 minutes after it has brought in a patient. One of the mechanisms used by the doctors and nurses in the emergency departments is what is referred to as ward over-census policy, which effectively creates temporary additional capacity on the wards to enable the emergency department to move admitted patients to the wards in anticipation of a patient discharge at times of peak demand. This is a great example of our very dedicated staff working in the emergency departments coming together for the good of patients. I table the report entitled “‘No ramping/No Diversion’ Trial Final Report”. [See paper 2146]. Mr J.A. McGINTY : I will briefly refer to a further five initiatives that have been undertaken to ease the pressure on our emergency departments. Firstly, six after-hours GP clinics have been established in conjunction with the emergency departments at our hospitals. So far this year those six GP clinics have treated 27 000 people, people who would have otherwise sought medical treatment from hospital emergency departments. This has freed up the capacity of emergency departments to deal with more seriously ill and injured patients. Second, the hospital in the home program is expanding dramatically to enable people, particularly those with chronic diseases, to be treated at home so that they do not require an expensive inpatient bed. Third, we have employed extra mental health staff to work in the emergency departments. Fourth, we have dedicated beds in most of our emergency departments to cater for people with chronic mental illnesses. Finally, we have increased the number of mental health beds. When the current program is complete, there will be an extra 108 acute beds and 400 community beds. Dr J.M. Woollard interjected. Mr J.A. McGINTY : Member for Alfred Cove, the good news is that since we came to government in 2001, we have increased the number of full - time equivalent nurses to almost 2 000. Since coming to government, we have employed 1 900 extra full - time equivalent nurses. The employment of so many extra nurses has enabled us to cope so much better. PHYSIOTHERAPISTS ACT 2005 - REGISTRATION OF GRADUATES OF UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME AUSTRALIA 2. Mr T.K. WALDRON to the Minister for Health: I will ask this question with a bit more enthusiasm than the member who asked the previous question! I refer to the delay in the accreditation of the first batch of physiotherapy graduates from the University of Notre Dame Australia by the Australian Physiotherapy Council. (1) Does the minister agree that this delay has resulted in those graduates being unable to work as physiotherapists unless they are given conditional or provisional classes of registration under the Physiotherapists Act? (2) Does the minister agree that until the Physiotherapists Act 2005 is proclaimed, there is no legal clause to allow graduates to attain conditional or provisional registration to work? (3) How long will it take for the legal and legislative services division of the Western Australian Department of Health to complete the regulations and for the act to be proclaimed; and, what is the minister doing to expedite the proclamation of the Physiotherapists Act 2005? Mr J.A. McGINTY replied: I thank member for Wagin for some notice of this question and for his enthusiasm for physiotherapy and manipulation! (1) - (3) The University of Notre Dame Australia applied for accreditation for its physiotherapy course in August this year. This is where the problem arose. It normally takes about six months to accredit a course of this nature. The application came in very late, given that the current batch of graduates completed their course at the end of September. Effectively, the application for accreditation of the course was made only one month prior to the students’ graduation. I do not want to make any criticisms; it just happened that way. The Physiotherapists Registration Board of Western Australia cannot recognise this qualification from the University of Notre Dame for the purposes of registration until such time as it is an accredited course. The current physiotherapy legislation makes no provision for any provisional or conditional registrations of physiotherapists. Fortunately, last year this Parliament passed the Physiotherapists Act 2005, which provides for the provisional and conditional registration of physiotherapists. That power will come into effect after the act is proclaimed. The act has not been proclaimed because the regulations have not been drafted. In recent days I signed off on the drafting instructions for the regulations to accompany that act. Now that we have discovered that there is a problem for the graduates of the University of Notre Dame, I have instructed the Department of Health to give top priority to this matter and to move with expedition to draft the regulations. It has advised me that the first draft of those regulations should be ready within a week or two. I will give this issue top priority to ensure that the regulations are promulgated as soon as possible. That will enable the act to be proclaimed, and the new board will be given the power to grant conditional or provisional registration to the UND graduates to enable them to practise. It is my hope that that process will be completed within a matter of weeks, rather than months. I thank the member for drawing this matter to my attention. It will receive urgent consideration.
Mr Speaker - Several members interjected. The SPEAKER : Order, members! Mr J.A. McGINTY : I thank the member for Perth for his ongoing interest in emergency management. I take this opportunity to congratulate four groups of people - the doctors who work in our emergency departments, the nurses who work in our emergency departments, the St John Ambulance Association, and the administration of our public hospitals - for what has been a resounding success during the 12-week trial in our emergency departments. The trial was designed to eliminate, or at least significantly reduce, the incidence of ambulance diversion and ramping at the period of peak demand in our emergency departments. The trial commenced on 10 July. It was such a success that it has been extended for a further eight weeks until 26 November. I am very pleased to report to the house that the trial resulted in zero episodes of ambulance diversion at the tertiary hospitals. That is quite a remarkable achievement. Between July and October last year - in other words, the peak winter months - the three major hospital emergency departments spent 123 hours on diversion. This year they did not spend one second on ambulance diversion, which is a great success. Several members interjected. Mr J.A. McGINTY : Why do members opposite not like the fact that things are going well? Members opposite are such a miserable mob. Even though the government has eliminated ambulance diversions from our teaching hospital emergency departments, those opposite are whingeing! Look at them all. They should join with me in celebrating a great success and pat our doctors, nurses and ambulance service on the back for the great job that they have done. Mr T. Buswell : What about the orderlies who push patients around the corridors all day? Mr J.A. McGINTY : I really feel sorry for members opposite. I hope that they stay in opposition for a long time, because that is their rightful position. The second thing that emerged from this very important trial, which was initiated by the emergency departments themselves, was a 77 per cent reduction in the frequency of ambulance ramping from 57 hours last year to 12.85 hours this year for the comparable period. Ambulance ramping is when an ambulance is at a hospital for longer than 20 minutes after it has brought in a patient. One of the mechanisms used by the doctors and nurses in the emergency departments is what is referred to as ward over-census policy, which effectively creates temporary additional capacity on the wards to enable the emergency department to move admitted patients to the wards in anticipation of a patient discharge at times of peak demand. This is a great example of our very dedicated staff working in the emergency departments coming together for the good of patients. I table the report entitled “‘No ramping/No Diversion’ Trial Final Report”. [See paper 2146]. Mr J.A. McGINTY : I will briefly refer to a further five initiatives that have been undertaken to ease the pressure on our emergency departments. Firstly, six after-hours GP clinics have been established in conjunction with the emergency departments at our hospitals. So far this year those six GP clinics have treated 27 000 people, people who would have otherwise sought medical treatment from hospital emergency departments. This has freed up the capacity of emergency departments to deal with more seriously ill and injured patients. Second, the hospital in the home program is expanding dramatically to enable people, particularly those with chronic diseases, to be treated at home so that they do not require an expensive inpatient bed. Third, we have employed extra mental health staff to work in the emergency departments. Fourth, we have dedicated beds in most of our emergency departments to cater for people with chronic mental illnesses. Finally, we have increased the number of mental health beds. When the current program is complete, there will be an extra 108 acute beds and 400 community beds. Dr J.M. Woollard interjected. Mr J.A. McGINTY : Member for Alfred Cove, the good news is that since we came to government in 2001, we have increased the number of full - time equivalent nurses to almost 2 000. Since coming to government, we have employed 1 900 extra full - time equivalent nurses. The employment of so many extra nurses has enabled us to cope so much better. PHYSIOTHERAPISTS ACT 2005 - REGISTRATION OF GRADUATES OF UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME AUSTRALIA 2. Mr T.K. WALDRON to the Minister for Health: I will ask this question with a bit more enthusiasm than the member who asked the previous question! I refer to the delay in the accreditation of the first batch of physiotherapy graduates from the University of Notre Dame Australia by the Australian Physiotherapy Council. (1) Does the minister agree that this delay has resulted in those graduates being unable to work as physiotherapists unless they are given conditional or provisional classes of registration under the Physiotherapists Act? (2) Does the minister agree that until the Physiotherapists Act 2005 is proclaimed, there is no legal clause to allow graduates to attain conditional or provisional registration to work? (3) How long will it take for the legal and legislative services division of the Western Australian Department of Health to complete the regulations and for the act to be proclaimed; and, what is the minister doing to expedite the proclamation of the Physiotherapists Act 2005? Mr J.A. McGINTY replied: I thank member for Wagin for some notice of this question and for his enthusiasm for physiotherapy and manipulation! (1) - (3) The University of Notre Dame Australia applied for accreditation for its physiotherapy course in August this year. This is where the problem arose. It normally takes about six months to accredit a course of this nature. The application came in very late, given that the current batch of graduates completed their course at the end of September. Effectively, the application for accreditation of the course was made only one month prior to the students’ graduation. I do not want to make any criticisms; it just happened that way. The Physiotherapists Registration Board of Western Australia cannot recognise this qualification from the University of Notre Dame for the purposes of registration until such time as it is an accredited course. The current physiotherapy legislation makes no provision for any provisional or conditional registrations of physiotherapists. Fortunately, last year this Parliament passed the Physiotherapists Act 2005, which provides for the provisional and conditional registration of physiotherapists. That power will come into effect after the act is proclaimed. The act has not been proclaimed because the regulations have not been drafted. In recent days I signed off on the drafting instructions for the regulations to accompany that act. Now that we have discovered that there is a problem for the graduates of the University of Notre Dame, I have instructed the Department of Health to give top priority to this matter and to move with expedition to draft the regulations. It has advised me that the first draft of those regulations should be ready within a week or two. I will give this issue top priority to ensure that the regulations are promulgated as soon as possible. That will enable the act to be proclaimed, and the new board will be given the power to grant conditional or provisional registration to the UND graduates to enable them to practise. It is my hope that that process will be completed within a matter of weeks, rather than months. I thank the member for drawing this matter to my attention. It will receive urgent consideration.
Several members interjected. The SPEAKER : Order, members! Mr J.A. McGINTY : I thank the member for Perth for his ongoing interest in emergency management. I take this opportunity to congratulate four groups of people - the doctors who work in our emergency departments, the nurses who work in our emergency departments, the St John Ambulance Association, and the administration of our public hospitals - for what has been a resounding success during the 12-week trial in our emergency departments. The trial was designed to eliminate, or at least significantly reduce, the incidence of ambulance diversion and ramping at the period of peak demand in our emergency departments. The trial commenced on 10 July. It was such a success that it has been extended for a further eight weeks until 26 November. I am very pleased to report to the house that the trial resulted in zero episodes of ambulance diversion at the tertiary hospitals. That is quite a remarkable achievement. Between July and October last year - in other words, the peak winter months - the three major hospital emergency departments spent 123 hours on diversion. This year they did not spend one second on ambulance diversion, which is a great success. Several members interjected. Mr J.A. McGINTY : Why do members opposite not like the fact that things are going well? Members opposite are such a miserable mob. Even though the government has eliminated ambulance diversions from our teaching hospital emergency departments, those opposite are whingeing! Look at them all. They should join with me in celebrating a great success and pat our doctors, nurses and ambulance service on the back for the great job that they have done. Mr T. Buswell : What about the orderlies who push patients around the corridors all day? Mr J.A. McGINTY : I really feel sorry for members opposite. I hope that they stay in opposition for a long time, because that is their rightful position. The second thing that emerged from this very important trial, which was initiated by the emergency departments themselves, was a 77 per cent reduction in the frequency of ambulance ramping from 57 hours last year to 12.85 hours this year for the comparable period. Ambulance ramping is when an ambulance is at a hospital for longer than 20 minutes after it has brought in a patient. One of the mechanisms used by the doctors and nurses in the emergency departments is what is referred to as ward over-census policy, which effectively creates temporary additional capacity on the wards to enable the emergency department to move admitted patients to the wards in anticipation of a patient discharge at times of peak demand. This is a great example of our very dedicated staff working in the emergency departments coming together for the good of patients. I table the report entitled “‘No ramping/No Diversion’ Trial Final Report”. [See paper 2146]. Mr J.A. McGINTY : I will briefly refer to a further five initiatives that have been undertaken to ease the pressure on our emergency departments. Firstly, six after-hours GP clinics have been established in conjunction with the emergency departments at our hospitals. So far this year those six GP clinics have treated 27 000 people, people who would have otherwise sought medical treatment from hospital emergency departments. This has freed up the capacity of emergency departments to deal with more seriously ill and injured patients. Second, the hospital in the home program is expanding dramatically to enable people, particularly those with chronic diseases, to be treated at home so that they do not require an expensive inpatient bed. Third, we have employed extra mental health staff to work in the emergency departments. Fourth, we have dedicated beds in most of our emergency departments to cater for people with chronic mental illnesses. Finally, we have increased the number of mental health beds. When the current program is complete, there will be an extra 108 acute beds and 400 community beds. Dr J.M. Woollard interjected. Mr J.A. McGINTY : Member for Alfred Cove, the good news is that since we came to government in 2001, we have increased the number of full - time equivalent nurses to almost 2 000. Since coming to government, we have employed 1 900 extra full - time equivalent nurses. The employment of so many extra nurses has enabled us to cope so much better. PHYSIOTHERAPISTS ACT 2005 - REGISTRATION OF GRADUATES OF UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME AUSTRALIA 2. Mr T.K. WALDRON to the Minister for Health: I will ask this question with a bit more enthusiasm than the member who asked the previous question! I refer to the delay in the accreditation of the first batch of physiotherapy graduates from the University of Notre Dame Australia by the Australian Physiotherapy Council. (1) Does the minister agree that this delay has resulted in those graduates being unable to work as physiotherapists unless they are given conditional or provisional classes of registration under the Physiotherapists Act? (2) Does the minister agree that until the Physiotherapists Act 2005 is proclaimed, there is no legal clause to allow graduates to attain conditional or provisional registration to work? (3) How long will it take for the legal and legislative services division of the Western Australian Department of Health to complete the regulations and for the act to be proclaimed; and, what is the minister doing to expedite the proclamation of the Physiotherapists Act 2005? Mr J.A. McGINTY replied: I thank member for Wagin for some notice of this question and for his enthusiasm for physiotherapy and manipulation! (1) - (3) The University of Notre Dame Australia applied for accreditation for its physiotherapy course in August this year. This is where the problem arose. It normally takes about six months to accredit a course of this nature. The application came in very late, given that the current batch of graduates completed their course at the end of September. Effectively, the application for accreditation of the course was made only one month prior to the students’ graduation. I do not want to make any criticisms; it just happened that way. The Physiotherapists Registration Board of Western Australia cannot recognise this qualification from the University of Notre Dame for the purposes of registration until such time as it is an accredited course. The current physiotherapy legislation makes no provision for any provisional or conditional registrations of physiotherapists. Fortunately, last year this Parliament passed the Physiotherapists Act 2005, which provides for the provisional and conditional registration of physiotherapists. That power will come into effect after the act is proclaimed. The act has not been proclaimed because the regulations have not been drafted. In recent days I signed off on the drafting instructions for the regulations to accompany that act. Now that we have discovered that there is a problem for the graduates of the University of Notre Dame, I have instructed the Department of Health to give top priority to this matter and to move with expedition to draft the regulations. It has advised me that the first draft of those regulations should be ready within a week or two. I will give this issue top priority to ensure that the regulations are promulgated as soon as possible. That will enable the act to be proclaimed, and the new board will be given the power to grant conditional or provisional registration to the UND graduates to enable them to practise. It is my hope that that process will be completed within a matter of weeks, rather than months. I thank the member for drawing this matter to my attention. It will receive urgent consideration.
The SPEAKER : Order, members! Mr J.A. McGINTY : I thank the member for Perth for his ongoing interest in emergency management. I take this opportunity to congratulate four groups of people - the doctors who work in our emergency departments, the nurses who work in our emergency departments, the St John Ambulance Association, and the administration of our public hospitals - for what has been a resounding success during the 12-week trial in our emergency departments. The trial was designed to eliminate, or at least significantly reduce, the incidence of ambulance diversion and ramping at the period of peak demand in our emergency departments. The trial commenced on 10 July. It was such a success that it has been extended for a further eight weeks until 26 November. I am very pleased to report to the house that the trial resulted in zero episodes of ambulance diversion at the tertiary hospitals. That is quite a remarkable achievement. Between July and October last year - in other words, the peak winter months - the three major hospital emergency departments spent 123 hours on diversion. This year they did not spend one second on ambulance diversion, which is a great success. Several members interjected. Mr J.A. McGINTY : Why do members opposite not like the fact that things are going well? Members opposite are such a miserable mob. Even though the government has eliminated ambulance diversions from our teaching hospital emergency departments, those opposite are whingeing! Look at them all. They should join with me in celebrating a great success and pat our doctors, nurses and ambulance service on the back for the great job that they have done. Mr T. Buswell : What about the orderlies who push patients around the corridors all day? Mr J.A. McGINTY : I really feel sorry for members opposite. I hope that they stay in opposition for a long time, because that is their rightful position. The second thing that emerged from this very important trial, which was initiated by the emergency departments themselves, was a 77 per cent reduction in the frequency of ambulance ramping from 57 hours last year to 12.85 hours this year for the comparable period. Ambulance ramping is when an ambulance is at a hospital for longer than 20 minutes after it has brought in a patient. One of the mechanisms used by the doctors and nurses in the emergency departments is what is referred to as ward over-census policy, which effectively creates temporary additional capacity on the wards to enable the emergency department to move admitted patients to the wards in anticipation of a patient discharge at times of peak demand. This is a great example of our very dedicated staff working in the emergency departments coming together for the good of patients. I table the report entitled “‘No ramping/No Diversion’ Trial Final Report”. [See paper 2146]. Mr J.A. McGINTY : I will briefly refer to a further five initiatives that have been undertaken to ease the pressure on our emergency departments. Firstly, six after-hours GP clinics have been established in conjunction with the emergency departments at our hospitals. So far this year those six GP clinics have treated 27 000 people, people who would have otherwise sought medical treatment from hospital emergency departments. This has freed up the capacity of emergency departments to deal with more seriously ill and injured patients. Second, the hospital in the home program is expanding dramatically to enable people, particularly those with chronic diseases, to be treated at home so that they do not require an expensive inpatient bed. Third, we have employed extra mental health staff to work in the emergency departments. Fourth, we have dedicated beds in most of our emergency departments to cater for people with chronic mental illnesses. Finally, we have increased the number of mental health beds. When the current program is complete, there will be an extra 108 acute beds and 400 community beds. Dr J.M. Woollard interjected. Mr J.A. McGINTY : Member for Alfred Cove, the good news is that since we came to government in 2001, we have increased the number of full - time equivalent nurses to almost 2 000. Since coming to government, we have employed 1 900 extra full - time equivalent nurses. The employment of so many extra nurses has enabled us to cope so much better. PHYSIOTHERAPISTS ACT 2005 - REGISTRATION OF GRADUATES OF UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME AUSTRALIA 2. Mr T.K. WALDRON to the Minister for Health: I will ask this question with a bit more enthusiasm than the member who asked the previous question! I refer to the delay in the accreditation of the first batch of physiotherapy graduates from the University of Notre Dame Australia by the Australian Physiotherapy Council. (1) Does the minister agree that this delay has resulted in those graduates being unable to work as physiotherapists unless they are given conditional or provisional classes of registration under the Physiotherapists Act? (2) Does the minister agree that until the Physiotherapists Act 2005 is proclaimed, there is no legal clause to allow graduates to attain conditional or provisional registration to work? (3) How long will it take for the legal and legislative services division of the Western Australian Department of Health to complete the regulations and for the act to be proclaimed; and, what is the minister doing to expedite the proclamation of the Physiotherapists Act 2005? Mr J.A. McGINTY replied: I thank member for Wagin for some notice of this question and for his enthusiasm for physiotherapy and manipulation! (1) - (3) The University of Notre Dame Australia applied for accreditation for its physiotherapy course in August this year. This is where the problem arose. It normally takes about six months to accredit a course of this nature. The application came in very late, given that the current batch of graduates completed their course at the end of September. Effectively, the application for accreditation of the course was made only one month prior to the students’ graduation. I do not want to make any criticisms; it just happened that way. The Physiotherapists Registration Board of Western Australia cannot recognise this qualification from the University of Notre Dame for the purposes of registration until such time as it is an accredited course. The current physiotherapy legislation makes no provision for any provisional or conditional registrations of physiotherapists. Fortunately, last year this Parliament passed the Physiotherapists Act 2005, which provides for the provisional and conditional registration of physiotherapists. That power will come into effect after the act is proclaimed. The act has not been proclaimed because the regulations have not been drafted. In recent days I signed off on the drafting instructions for the regulations to accompany that act. Now that we have discovered that there is a problem for the graduates of the University of Notre Dame, I have instructed the Department of Health to give top priority to this matter and to move with expedition to draft the regulations. It has advised me that the first draft of those regulations should be ready within a week or two. I will give this issue top priority to ensure that the regulations are promulgated as soon as possible. That will enable the act to be proclaimed, and the new board will be given the power to grant conditional or provisional registration to the UND graduates to enable them to practise. It is my hope that that process will be completed within a matter of weeks, rather than months. I thank the member for drawing this matter to my attention. It will receive urgent consideration.
Mr J.A. McGINTY : I thank the member for Perth for his ongoing interest in emergency management. I take this opportunity to congratulate four groups of people - the doctors who work in our emergency departments, the nurses who work in our emergency departments, the St John Ambulance Association, and the administration of our public hospitals - for what has been a resounding success during the 12-week trial in our emergency departments. The trial was designed to eliminate, or at least significantly reduce, the incidence of ambulance diversion and ramping at the period of peak demand in our emergency departments. The trial commenced on 10 July. It was such a success that it has been extended for a further eight weeks until 26 November. I am very pleased to report to the house that the trial resulted in zero episodes of ambulance diversion at the tertiary hospitals. That is quite a remarkable achievement. Between July and October last year - in other words, the peak winter months - the three major hospital emergency departments spent 123 hours on diversion. This year they did not spend one second on ambulance diversion, which is a great success. Several members interjected. Mr J.A. McGINTY : Why do members opposite not like the fact that things are going well? Members opposite are such a miserable mob. Even though the government has eliminated ambulance diversions from our teaching hospital emergency departments, those opposite are whingeing! Look at them all. They should join with me in celebrating a great success and pat our doctors, nurses and ambulance service on the back for the great job that they have done. Mr T. Buswell : What about the orderlies who push patients around the corridors all day? Mr J.A. McGINTY : I really feel sorry for members opposite. I hope that they stay in opposition for a long time, because that is their rightful position. The second thing that emerged from this very important trial, which was initiated by the emergency departments themselves, was a 77 per cent reduction in the frequency of ambulance ramping from 57 hours last year to 12.85 hours this year for the comparable period. Ambulance ramping is when an ambulance is at a hospital for longer than 20 minutes after it has brought in a patient. One of the mechanisms used by the doctors and nurses in the emergency departments is what is referred to as ward over-census policy, which effectively creates temporary additional capacity on the wards to enable the emergency department to move admitted patients to the wards in anticipation of a patient discharge at times of peak demand. This is a great example of our very dedicated staff working in the emergency departments coming together for the good of patients. I table the report entitled “‘No ramping/No Diversion’ Trial Final Report”. [See paper 2146]. Mr J.A. McGINTY : I will briefly refer to a further five initiatives that have been undertaken to ease the pressure on our emergency departments. Firstly, six after-hours GP clinics have been established in conjunction with the emergency departments at our hospitals. So far this year those six GP clinics have treated 27 000 people, people who would have otherwise sought medical treatment from hospital emergency departments. This has freed up the capacity of emergency departments to deal with more seriously ill and injured patients. Second, the hospital in the home program is expanding dramatically to enable people, particularly those with chronic diseases, to be treated at home so that they do not require an expensive inpatient bed. Third, we have employed extra mental health staff to work in the emergency departments. Fourth, we have dedicated beds in most of our emergency departments to cater for people with chronic mental illnesses. Finally, we have increased the number of mental health beds. When the current program is complete, there will be an extra 108 acute beds and 400 community beds. Dr J.M. Woollard interjected. Mr J.A. McGINTY : Member for Alfred Cove, the good news is that since we came to government in 2001, we have increased the number of full - time equivalent nurses to almost 2 000. Since coming to government, we have employed 1 900 extra full - time equivalent nurses. The employment of so many extra nurses has enabled us to cope so much better. PHYSIOTHERAPISTS ACT 2005 - REGISTRATION OF GRADUATES OF UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME AUSTRALIA 2. Mr T.K. WALDRON to the Minister for Health: I will ask this question with a bit more enthusiasm than the member who asked the previous question! I refer to the delay in the accreditation of the first batch of physiotherapy graduates from the University of Notre Dame Australia by the Australian Physiotherapy Council. (1) Does the minister agree that this delay has resulted in those graduates being unable to work as physiotherapists unless they are given conditional or provisional classes of registration under the Physiotherapists Act? (2) Does the minister agree that until the Physiotherapists Act 2005 is proclaimed, there is no legal clause to allow graduates to attain conditional or provisional registration to work? (3) How long will it take for the legal and legislative services division of the Western Australian Department of Health to complete the regulations and for the act to be proclaimed; and, what is the minister doing to expedite the proclamation of the Physiotherapists Act 2005? Mr J.A. McGINTY replied: I thank member for Wagin for some notice of this question and for his enthusiasm for physiotherapy and manipulation! (1) - (3) The University of Notre Dame Australia applied for accreditation for its physiotherapy course in August this year. This is where the problem arose. It normally takes about six months to accredit a course of this nature. The application came in very late, given that the current batch of graduates completed their course at the end of September. Effectively, the application for accreditation of the course was made only one month prior to the students’ graduation. I do not want to make any criticisms; it just happened that way. The Physiotherapists Registration Board of Western Australia cannot recognise this qualification from the University of Notre Dame for the purposes of registration until such time as it is an accredited course. The current physiotherapy legislation makes no provision for any provisional or conditional registrations of physiotherapists. Fortunately, last year this Parliament passed the Physiotherapists Act 2005, which provides for the provisional and conditional registration of physiotherapists. That power will come into effect after the act is proclaimed. The act has not been proclaimed because the regulations have not been drafted. In recent days I signed off on the drafting instructions for the regulations to accompany that act. Now that we have discovered that there is a problem for the graduates of the University of Notre Dame, I have instructed the Department of Health to give top priority to this matter and to move with expedition to draft the regulations. It has advised me that the first draft of those regulations should be ready within a week or two. I will give this issue top priority to ensure that the regulations are promulgated as soon as possible. That will enable the act to be proclaimed, and the new board will be given the power to grant conditional or provisional registration to the UND graduates to enable them to practise. It is my hope that that process will be completed within a matter of weeks, rather than months. I thank the member for drawing this matter to my attention. It will receive urgent consideration.
The trial commenced on 10 July. It was such a success that it has been extended for a further eight weeks until 26 November. I am very pleased to report to the house that the trial resulted in zero episodes of ambulance diversion at the tertiary hospitals. That is quite a remarkable achievement. Between July and October last year - in other words, the peak winter months - the three major hospital emergency departments spent 123 hours on diversion. This year they did not spend one second on ambulance diversion, which is a great success. Several members interjected. Mr J.A. McGINTY : Why do members opposite not like the fact that things are going well? Members opposite are such a miserable mob. Even though the government has eliminated ambulance diversions from our teaching hospital emergency departments, those opposite are whingeing! Look at them all. They should join with me in celebrating a great success and pat our doctors, nurses and ambulance service on the back for the great job that they have done. Mr T. Buswell : What about the orderlies who push patients around the corridors all day? Mr J.A. McGINTY : I really feel sorry for members opposite. I hope that they stay in opposition for a long time, because that is their rightful position. The second thing that emerged from this very important trial, which was initiated by the emergency departments themselves, was a 77 per cent reduction in the frequency of ambulance ramping from 57 hours last year to 12.85 hours this year for the comparable period. Ambulance ramping is when an ambulance is at a hospital for longer than 20 minutes after it has brought in a patient. One of the mechanisms used by the doctors and nurses in the emergency departments is what is referred to as ward over-census policy, which effectively creates temporary additional capacity on the wards to enable the emergency department to move admitted patients to the wards in anticipation of a patient discharge at times of peak demand. This is a great example of our very dedicated staff working in the emergency departments coming together for the good of patients. I table the report entitled “‘No ramping/No Diversion’ Trial Final Report”. [See paper 2146]. Mr J.A. McGINTY : I will briefly refer to a further five initiatives that have been undertaken to ease the pressure on our emergency departments. Firstly, six after-hours GP clinics have been established in conjunction with the emergency departments at our hospitals. So far this year those six GP clinics have treated 27 000 people, people who would have otherwise sought medical treatment from hospital emergency departments. This has freed up the capacity of emergency departments to deal with more seriously ill and injured patients. Second, the hospital in the home program is expanding dramatically to enable people, particularly those with chronic diseases, to be treated at home so that they do not require an expensive inpatient bed. Third, we have employed extra mental health staff to work in the emergency departments. Fourth, we have dedicated beds in most of our emergency departments to cater for people with chronic mental illnesses. Finally, we have increased the number of mental health beds. When the current program is complete, there will be an extra 108 acute beds and 400 community beds. Dr J.M. Woollard interjected. Mr J.A. McGINTY : Member for Alfred Cove, the good news is that since we came to government in 2001, we have increased the number of full - time equivalent nurses to almost 2 000. Since coming to government, we have employed 1 900 extra full - time equivalent nurses. The employment of so many extra nurses has enabled us to cope so much better. PHYSIOTHERAPISTS ACT 2005 - REGISTRATION OF GRADUATES OF UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME AUSTRALIA 2. Mr T.K. WALDRON to the Minister for Health: I will ask this question with a bit more enthusiasm than the member who asked the previous question! I refer to the delay in the accreditation of the first batch of physiotherapy graduates from the University of Notre Dame Australia by the Australian Physiotherapy Council. (1) Does the minister agree that this delay has resulted in those graduates being unable to work as physiotherapists unless they are given conditional or provisional classes of registration under the Physiotherapists Act? (2) Does the minister agree that until the Physiotherapists Act 2005 is proclaimed, there is no legal clause to allow graduates to attain conditional or provisional registration to work? (3) How long will it take for the legal and legislative services division of the Western Australian Department of Health to complete the regulations and for the act to be proclaimed; and, what is the minister doing to expedite the proclamation of the Physiotherapists Act 2005? Mr J.A. McGINTY replied: I thank member for Wagin for some notice of this question and for his enthusiasm for physiotherapy and manipulation! (1) - (3) The University of Notre Dame Australia applied for accreditation for its physiotherapy course in August this year. This is where the problem arose. It normally takes about six months to accredit a course of this nature. The application came in very late, given that the current batch of graduates completed their course at the end of September. Effectively, the application for accreditation of the course was made only one month prior to the students’ graduation. I do not want to make any criticisms; it just happened that way. The Physiotherapists Registration Board of Western Australia cannot recognise this qualification from the University of Notre Dame for the purposes of registration until such time as it is an accredited course. The current physiotherapy legislation makes no provision for any provisional or conditional registrations of physiotherapists. Fortunately, last year this Parliament passed the Physiotherapists Act 2005, which provides for the provisional and conditional registration of physiotherapists. That power will come into effect after the act is proclaimed. The act has not been proclaimed because the regulations have not been drafted. In recent days I signed off on the drafting instructions for the regulations to accompany that act. Now that we have discovered that there is a problem for the graduates of the University of Notre Dame, I have instructed the Department of Health to give top priority to this matter and to move with expedition to draft the regulations. It has advised me that the first draft of those regulations should be ready within a week or two. I will give this issue top priority to ensure that the regulations are promulgated as soon as possible. That will enable the act to be proclaimed, and the new board will be given the power to grant conditional or provisional registration to the UND graduates to enable them to practise. It is my hope that that process will be completed within a matter of weeks, rather than months. I thank the member for drawing this matter to my attention. It will receive urgent consideration.
Several members interjected. Mr J.A. McGINTY : Why do members opposite not like the fact that things are going well? Members opposite are such a miserable mob. Even though the government has eliminated ambulance diversions from our teaching hospital emergency departments, those opposite are whingeing! Look at them all. They should join with me in celebrating a great success and pat our doctors, nurses and ambulance service on the back for the great job that they have done. Mr T. Buswell : What about the orderlies who push patients around the corridors all day? Mr J.A. McGINTY : I really feel sorry for members opposite. I hope that they stay in opposition for a long time, because that is their rightful position. The second thing that emerged from this very important trial, which was initiated by the emergency departments themselves, was a 77 per cent reduction in the frequency of ambulance ramping from 57 hours last year to 12.85 hours this year for the comparable period. Ambulance ramping is when an ambulance is at a hospital for longer than 20 minutes after it has brought in a patient. One of the mechanisms used by the doctors and nurses in the emergency departments is what is referred to as ward over-census policy, which effectively creates temporary additional capacity on the wards to enable the emergency department to move admitted patients to the wards in anticipation of a patient discharge at times of peak demand. This is a great example of our very dedicated staff working in the emergency departments coming together for the good of patients. I table the report entitled “‘No ramping/No Diversion’ Trial Final Report”. [See paper 2146]. Mr J.A. McGINTY : I will briefly refer to a further five initiatives that have been undertaken to ease the pressure on our emergency departments. Firstly, six after-hours GP clinics have been established in conjunction with the emergency departments at our hospitals. So far this year those six GP clinics have treated 27 000 people, people who would have otherwise sought medical treatment from hospital emergency departments. This has freed up the capacity of emergency departments to deal with more seriously ill and injured patients. Second, the hospital in the home program is expanding dramatically to enable people, particularly those with chronic diseases, to be treated at home so that they do not require an expensive inpatient bed. Third, we have employed extra mental health staff to work in the emergency departments. Fourth, we have dedicated beds in most of our emergency departments to cater for people with chronic mental illnesses. Finally, we have increased the number of mental health beds. When the current program is complete, there will be an extra 108 acute beds and 400 community beds. Dr J.M. Woollard interjected. Mr J.A. McGINTY : Member for Alfred Cove, the good news is that since we came to government in 2001, we have increased the number of full - time equivalent nurses to almost 2 000. Since coming to government, we have employed 1 900 extra full - time equivalent nurses. The employment of so many extra nurses has enabled us to cope so much better. PHYSIOTHERAPISTS ACT 2005 - REGISTRATION OF GRADUATES OF UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME AUSTRALIA 2. Mr T.K. WALDRON to the Minister for Health: I will ask this question with a bit more enthusiasm than the member who asked the previous question! I refer to the delay in the accreditation of the first batch of physiotherapy graduates from the University of Notre Dame Australia by the Australian Physiotherapy Council. (1) Does the minister agree that this delay has resulted in those graduates being unable to work as physiotherapists unless they are given conditional or provisional classes of registration under the Physiotherapists Act? (2) Does the minister agree that until the Physiotherapists Act 2005 is proclaimed, there is no legal clause to allow graduates to attain conditional or provisional registration to work? (3) How long will it take for the legal and legislative services division of the Western Australian Department of Health to complete the regulations and for the act to be proclaimed; and, what is the minister doing to expedite the proclamation of the Physiotherapists Act 2005? Mr J.A. McGINTY replied: I thank member for Wagin for some notice of this question and for his enthusiasm for physiotherapy and manipulation! (1) - (3) The University of Notre Dame Australia applied for accreditation for its physiotherapy course in August this year. This is where the problem arose. It normally takes about six months to accredit a course of this nature. The application came in very late, given that the current batch of graduates completed their course at the end of September. Effectively, the application for accreditation of the course was made only one month prior to the students’ graduation. I do not want to make any criticisms; it just happened that way. The Physiotherapists Registration Board of Western Australia cannot recognise this qualification from the University of Notre Dame for the purposes of registration until such time as it is an accredited course. The current physiotherapy legislation makes no provision for any provisional or conditional registrations of physiotherapists. Fortunately, last year this Parliament passed the Physiotherapists Act 2005, which provides for the provisional and conditional registration of physiotherapists. That power will come into effect after the act is proclaimed. The act has not been proclaimed because the regulations have not been drafted. In recent days I signed off on the drafting instructions for the regulations to accompany that act. Now that we have discovered that there is a problem for the graduates of the University of Notre Dame, I have instructed the Department of Health to give top priority to this matter and to move with expedition to draft the regulations. It has advised me that the first draft of those regulations should be ready within a week or two. I will give this issue top priority to ensure that the regulations are promulgated as soon as possible. That will enable the act to be proclaimed, and the new board will be given the power to grant conditional or provisional registration to the UND graduates to enable them to practise. It is my hope that that process will be completed within a matter of weeks, rather than months. I thank the member for drawing this matter to my attention. It will receive urgent consideration.
Mr J.A. McGINTY : Why do members opposite not like the fact that things are going well? Members opposite are such a miserable mob. Even though the government has eliminated ambulance diversions from our teaching hospital emergency departments, those opposite are whingeing! Look at them all. They should join with me in celebrating a great success and pat our doctors, nurses and ambulance service on the back for the great job that they have done. Mr T. Buswell : What about the orderlies who push patients around the corridors all day? Mr J.A. McGINTY : I really feel sorry for members opposite. I hope that they stay in opposition for a long time, because that is their rightful position. The second thing that emerged from this very important trial, which was initiated by the emergency departments themselves, was a 77 per cent reduction in the frequency of ambulance ramping from 57 hours last year to 12.85 hours this year for the comparable period. Ambulance ramping is when an ambulance is at a hospital for longer than 20 minutes after it has brought in a patient. One of the mechanisms used by the doctors and nurses in the emergency departments is what is referred to as ward over-census policy, which effectively creates temporary additional capacity on the wards to enable the emergency department to move admitted patients to the wards in anticipation of a patient discharge at times of peak demand. This is a great example of our very dedicated staff working in the emergency departments coming together for the good of patients. I table the report entitled “‘No ramping/No Diversion’ Trial Final Report”. [See paper 2146]. Mr J.A. McGINTY : I will briefly refer to a further five initiatives that have been undertaken to ease the pressure on our emergency departments. Firstly, six after-hours GP clinics have been established in conjunction with the emergency departments at our hospitals. So far this year those six GP clinics have treated 27 000 people, people who would have otherwise sought medical treatment from hospital emergency departments. This has freed up the capacity of emergency departments to deal with more seriously ill and injured patients. Second, the hospital in the home program is expanding dramatically to enable people, particularly those with chronic diseases, to be treated at home so that they do not require an expensive inpatient bed. Third, we have employed extra mental health staff to work in the emergency departments. Fourth, we have dedicated beds in most of our emergency departments to cater for people with chronic mental illnesses. Finally, we have increased the number of mental health beds. When the current program is complete, there will be an extra 108 acute beds and 400 community beds. Dr J.M. Woollard interjected. Mr J.A. McGINTY : Member for Alfred Cove, the good news is that since we came to government in 2001, we have increased the number of full - time equivalent nurses to almost 2 000. Since coming to government, we have employed 1 900 extra full - time equivalent nurses. The employment of so many extra nurses has enabled us to cope so much better. PHYSIOTHERAPISTS ACT 2005 - REGISTRATION OF GRADUATES OF UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME AUSTRALIA 2. Mr T.K. WALDRON to the Minister for Health: I will ask this question with a bit more enthusiasm than the member who asked the previous question! I refer to the delay in the accreditation of the first batch of physiotherapy graduates from the University of Notre Dame Australia by the Australian Physiotherapy Council. (1) Does the minister agree that this delay has resulted in those graduates being unable to work as physiotherapists unless they are given conditional or provisional classes of registration under the Physiotherapists Act? (2) Does the minister agree that until the Physiotherapists Act 2005 is proclaimed, there is no legal clause to allow graduates to attain conditional or provisional registration to work? (3) How long will it take for the legal and legislative services division of the Western Australian Department of Health to complete the regulations and for the act to be proclaimed; and, what is the minister doing to expedite the proclamation of the Physiotherapists Act 2005? Mr J.A. McGINTY replied: I thank member for Wagin for some notice of this question and for his enthusiasm for physiotherapy and manipulation! (1) - (3) The University of Notre Dame Australia applied for accreditation for its physiotherapy course in August this year. This is where the problem arose. It normally takes about six months to accredit a course of this nature. The application came in very late, given that the current batch of graduates completed their course at the end of September. Effectively, the application for accreditation of the course was made only one month prior to the students’ graduation. I do not want to make any criticisms; it just happened that way. The Physiotherapists Registration Board of Western Australia cannot recognise this qualification from the University of Notre Dame for the purposes of registration until such time as it is an accredited course. The current physiotherapy legislation makes no provision for any provisional or conditional registrations of physiotherapists. Fortunately, last year this Parliament passed the Physiotherapists Act 2005, which provides for the provisional and conditional registration of physiotherapists. That power will come into effect after the act is proclaimed. The act has not been proclaimed because the regulations have not been drafted. In recent days I signed off on the drafting instructions for the regulations to accompany that act. Now that we have discovered that there is a problem for the graduates of the University of Notre Dame, I have instructed the Department of Health to give top priority to this matter and to move with expedition to draft the regulations. It has advised me that the first draft of those regulations should be ready within a week or two. I will give this issue top priority to ensure that the regulations are promulgated as soon as possible. That will enable the act to be proclaimed, and the new board will be given the power to grant conditional or provisional registration to the UND graduates to enable them to practise. It is my hope that that process will be completed within a matter of weeks, rather than months. I thank the member for drawing this matter to my attention. It will receive urgent consideration.
Mr T. Buswell : What about the orderlies who push patients around the corridors all day? Mr J.A. McGINTY : I really feel sorry for members opposite. I hope that they stay in opposition for a long time, because that is their rightful position. The second thing that emerged from this very important trial, which was initiated by the emergency departments themselves, was a 77 per cent reduction in the frequency of ambulance ramping from 57 hours last year to 12.85 hours this year for the comparable period. Ambulance ramping is when an ambulance is at a hospital for longer than 20 minutes after it has brought in a patient. One of the mechanisms used by the doctors and nurses in the emergency departments is what is referred to as ward over-census policy, which effectively creates temporary additional capacity on the wards to enable the emergency department to move admitted patients to the wards in anticipation of a patient discharge at times of peak demand. This is a great example of our very dedicated staff working in the emergency departments coming together for the good of patients. I table the report entitled “‘No ramping/No Diversion’ Trial Final Report”. [See paper 2146]. Mr J.A. McGINTY : I will briefly refer to a further five initiatives that have been undertaken to ease the pressure on our emergency departments. Firstly, six after-hours GP clinics have been established in conjunction with the emergency departments at our hospitals. So far this year those six GP clinics have treated 27 000 people, people who would have otherwise sought medical treatment from hospital emergency departments. This has freed up the capacity of emergency departments to deal with more seriously ill and injured patients. Second, the hospital in the home program is expanding dramatically to enable people, particularly those with chronic diseases, to be treated at home so that they do not require an expensive inpatient bed. Third, we have employed extra mental health staff to work in the emergency departments. Fourth, we have dedicated beds in most of our emergency departments to cater for people with chronic mental illnesses. Finally, we have increased the number of mental health beds. When the current program is complete, there will be an extra 108 acute beds and 400 community beds. Dr J.M. Woollard interjected. Mr J.A. McGINTY : Member for Alfred Cove, the good news is that since we came to government in 2001, we have increased the number of full - time equivalent nurses to almost 2 000. Since coming to government, we have employed 1 900 extra full - time equivalent nurses. The employment of so many extra nurses has enabled us to cope so much better. PHYSIOTHERAPISTS ACT 2005 - REGISTRATION OF GRADUATES OF UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME AUSTRALIA 2. Mr T.K. WALDRON to the Minister for Health: I will ask this question with a bit more enthusiasm than the member who asked the previous question! I refer to the delay in the accreditation of the first batch of physiotherapy graduates from the University of Notre Dame Australia by the Australian Physiotherapy Council. (1) Does the minister agree that this delay has resulted in those graduates being unable to work as physiotherapists unless they are given conditional or provisional classes of registration under the Physiotherapists Act? (2) Does the minister agree that until the Physiotherapists Act 2005 is proclaimed, there is no legal clause to allow graduates to attain conditional or provisional registration to work? (3) How long will it take for the legal and legislative services division of the Western Australian Department of Health to complete the regulations and for the act to be proclaimed; and, what is the minister doing to expedite the proclamation of the Physiotherapists Act 2005? Mr J.A. McGINTY replied: I thank member for Wagin for some notice of this question and for his enthusiasm for physiotherapy and manipulation! (1) - (3) The University of Notre Dame Australia applied for accreditation for its physiotherapy course in August this year. This is where the problem arose. It normally takes about six months to accredit a course of this nature. The application came in very late, given that the current batch of graduates completed their course at the end of September. Effectively, the application for accreditation of the course was made only one month prior to the students’ graduation. I do not want to make any criticisms; it just happened that way. The Physiotherapists Registration Board of Western Australia cannot recognise this qualification from the University of Notre Dame for the purposes of registration until such time as it is an accredited course. The current physiotherapy legislation makes no provision for any provisional or conditional registrations of physiotherapists. Fortunately, last year this Parliament passed the Physiotherapists Act 2005, which provides for the provisional and conditional registration of physiotherapists. That power will come into effect after the act is proclaimed. The act has not been proclaimed because the regulations have not been drafted. In recent days I signed off on the drafting instructions for the regulations to accompany that act. Now that we have discovered that there is a problem for the graduates of the University of Notre Dame, I have instructed the Department of Health to give top priority to this matter and to move with expedition to draft the regulations. It has advised me that the first draft of those regulations should be ready within a week or two. I will give this issue top priority to ensure that the regulations are promulgated as soon as possible. That will enable the act to be proclaimed, and the new board will be given the power to grant conditional or provisional registration to the UND graduates to enable them to practise. It is my hope that that process will be completed within a matter of weeks, rather than months. I thank the member for drawing this matter to my attention. It will receive urgent consideration.
Mr J.A. McGINTY : I really feel sorry for members opposite. I hope that they stay in opposition for a long time, because that is their rightful position. The second thing that emerged from this very important trial, which was initiated by the emergency departments themselves, was a 77 per cent reduction in the frequency of ambulance ramping from 57 hours last year to 12.85 hours this year for the comparable period. Ambulance ramping is when an ambulance is at a hospital for longer than 20 minutes after it has brought in a patient. One of the mechanisms used by the doctors and nurses in the emergency departments is what is referred to as ward over-census policy, which effectively creates temporary additional capacity on the wards to enable the emergency department to move admitted patients to the wards in anticipation of a patient discharge at times of peak demand. This is a great example of our very dedicated staff working in the emergency departments coming together for the good of patients. I table the report entitled “‘No ramping/No Diversion’ Trial Final Report”. [See paper 2146]. Mr J.A. McGINTY : I will briefly refer to a further five initiatives that have been undertaken to ease the pressure on our emergency departments. Firstly, six after-hours GP clinics have been established in conjunction with the emergency departments at our hospitals. So far this year those six GP clinics have treated 27 000 people, people who would have otherwise sought medical treatment from hospital emergency departments. This has freed up the capacity of emergency departments to deal with more seriously ill and injured patients. Second, the hospital in the home program is expanding dramatically to enable people, particularly those with chronic diseases, to be treated at home so that they do not require an expensive inpatient bed. Third, we have employed extra mental health staff to work in the emergency departments. Fourth, we have dedicated beds in most of our emergency departments to cater for people with chronic mental illnesses. Finally, we have increased the number of mental health beds. When the current program is complete, there will be an extra 108 acute beds and 400 community beds. Dr J.M. Woollard interjected. Mr J.A. McGINTY : Member for Alfred Cove, the good news is that since we came to government in 2001, we have increased the number of full - time equivalent nurses to almost 2 000. Since coming to government, we have employed 1 900 extra full - time equivalent nurses. The employment of so many extra nurses has enabled us to cope so much better. PHYSIOTHERAPISTS ACT 2005 - REGISTRATION OF GRADUATES OF UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME AUSTRALIA 2. Mr T.K. WALDRON to the Minister for Health: I will ask this question with a bit more enthusiasm than the member who asked the previous question! I refer to the delay in the accreditation of the first batch of physiotherapy graduates from the University of Notre Dame Australia by the Australian Physiotherapy Council. (1) Does the minister agree that this delay has resulted in those graduates being unable to work as physiotherapists unless they are given conditional or provisional classes of registration under the Physiotherapists Act? (2) Does the minister agree that until the Physiotherapists Act 2005 is proclaimed, there is no legal clause to allow graduates to attain conditional or provisional registration to work? (3) How long will it take for the legal and legislative services division of the Western Australian Department of Health to complete the regulations and for the act to be proclaimed; and, what is the minister doing to expedite the proclamation of the Physiotherapists Act 2005? Mr J.A. McGINTY replied: I thank member for Wagin for some notice of this question and for his enthusiasm for physiotherapy and manipulation! (1) - (3) The University of Notre Dame Australia applied for accreditation for its physiotherapy course in August this year. This is where the problem arose. It normally takes about six months to accredit a course of this nature. The application came in very late, given that the current batch of graduates completed their course at the end of September. Effectively, the application for accreditation of the course was made only one month prior to the students’ graduation. I do not want to make any criticisms; it just happened that way. The Physiotherapists Registration Board of Western Australia cannot recognise this qualification from the University of Notre Dame for the purposes of registration until such time as it is an accredited course. The current physiotherapy legislation makes no provision for any provisional or conditional registrations of physiotherapists. Fortunately, last year this Parliament passed the Physiotherapists Act 2005, which provides for the provisional and conditional registration of physiotherapists. That power will come into effect after the act is proclaimed. The act has not been proclaimed because the regulations have not been drafted. In recent days I signed off on the drafting instructions for the regulations to accompany that act. Now that we have discovered that there is a problem for the graduates of the University of Notre Dame, I have instructed the Department of Health to give top priority to this matter and to move with expedition to draft the regulations. It has advised me that the first draft of those regulations should be ready within a week or two. I will give this issue top priority to ensure that the regulations are promulgated as soon as possible. That will enable the act to be proclaimed, and the new board will be given the power to grant conditional or provisional registration to the UND graduates to enable them to practise. It is my hope that that process will be completed within a matter of weeks, rather than months. I thank the member for drawing this matter to my attention. It will receive urgent consideration.
The second thing that emerged from this very important trial, which was initiated by the emergency departments themselves, was a 77 per cent reduction in the frequency of ambulance ramping from 57 hours last year to 12.85 hours this year for the comparable period. Ambulance ramping is when an ambulance is at a hospital for longer than 20 minutes after it has brought in a patient. One of the mechanisms used by the doctors and nurses in the emergency departments is what is referred to as ward over-census policy, which effectively creates temporary additional capacity on the wards to enable the emergency department to move admitted patients to the wards in anticipation of a patient discharge at times of peak demand. This is a great example of our very dedicated staff working in the emergency departments coming together for the good of patients. I table the report entitled “‘No ramping/No Diversion’ Trial Final Report”. [See paper 2146]. Mr J.A. McGINTY : I will briefly refer to a further five initiatives that have been undertaken to ease the pressure on our emergency departments. Firstly, six after-hours GP clinics have been established in conjunction with the emergency departments at our hospitals. So far this year those six GP clinics have treated 27 000 people, people who would have otherwise sought medical treatment from hospital emergency departments. This has freed up the capacity of emergency departments to deal with more seriously ill and injured patients. Second, the hospital in the home program is expanding dramatically to enable people, particularly those with chronic diseases, to be treated at home so that they do not require an expensive inpatient bed. Third, we have employed extra mental health staff to work in the emergency departments. Fourth, we have dedicated beds in most of our emergency departments to cater for people with chronic mental illnesses. Finally, we have increased the number of mental health beds. When the current program is complete, there will be an extra 108 acute beds and 400 community beds. Dr J.M. Woollard interjected. Mr J.A. McGINTY : Member for Alfred Cove, the good news is that since we came to government in 2001, we have increased the number of full - time equivalent nurses to almost 2 000. Since coming to government, we have employed 1 900 extra full - time equivalent nurses. The employment of so many extra nurses has enabled us to cope so much better. PHYSIOTHERAPISTS ACT 2005 - REGISTRATION OF GRADUATES OF UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME AUSTRALIA 2. Mr T.K. WALDRON to the Minister for Health: I will ask this question with a bit more enthusiasm than the member who asked the previous question! I refer to the delay in the accreditation of the first batch of physiotherapy graduates from the University of Notre Dame Australia by the Australian Physiotherapy Council. (1) Does the minister agree that this delay has resulted in those graduates being unable to work as physiotherapists unless they are given conditional or provisional classes of registration under the Physiotherapists Act? (2) Does the minister agree that until the Physiotherapists Act 2005 is proclaimed, there is no legal clause to allow graduates to attain conditional or provisional registration to work? (3) How long will it take for the legal and legislative services division of the Western Australian Department of Health to complete the regulations and for the act to be proclaimed; and, what is the minister doing to expedite the proclamation of the Physiotherapists Act 2005? Mr J.A. McGINTY replied: I thank member for Wagin for some notice of this question and for his enthusiasm for physiotherapy and manipulation! (1) - (3) The University of Notre Dame Australia applied for accreditation for its physiotherapy course in August this year. This is where the problem arose. It normally takes about six months to accredit a course of this nature. The application came in very late, given that the current batch of graduates completed their course at the end of September. Effectively, the application for accreditation of the course was made only one month prior to the students’ graduation. I do not want to make any criticisms; it just happened that way. The Physiotherapists Registration Board of Western Australia cannot recognise this qualification from the University of Notre Dame for the purposes of registration until such time as it is an accredited course. The current physiotherapy legislation makes no provision for any provisional or conditional registrations of physiotherapists. Fortunately, last year this Parliament passed the Physiotherapists Act 2005, which provides for the provisional and conditional registration of physiotherapists. That power will come into effect after the act is proclaimed. The act has not been proclaimed because the regulations have not been drafted. In recent days I signed off on the drafting instructions for the regulations to accompany that act. Now that we have discovered that there is a problem for the graduates of the University of Notre Dame, I have instructed the Department of Health to give top priority to this matter and to move with expedition to draft the regulations. It has advised me that the first draft of those regulations should be ready within a week or two. I will give this issue top priority to ensure that the regulations are promulgated as soon as possible. That will enable the act to be proclaimed, and the new board will be given the power to grant conditional or provisional registration to the UND graduates to enable them to practise. It is my hope that that process will be completed within a matter of weeks, rather than months. I thank the member for drawing this matter to my attention. It will receive urgent consideration.
[See paper 2146]. Mr J.A. McGINTY : I will briefly refer to a further five initiatives that have been undertaken to ease the pressure on our emergency departments. Firstly, six after-hours GP clinics have been established in conjunction with the emergency departments at our hospitals. So far this year those six GP clinics have treated 27 000 people, people who would have otherwise sought medical treatment from hospital emergency departments. This has freed up the capacity of emergency departments to deal with more seriously ill and injured patients. Second, the hospital in the home program is expanding dramatically to enable people, particularly those with chronic diseases, to be treated at home so that they do not require an expensive inpatient bed. Third, we have employed extra mental health staff to work in the emergency departments. Fourth, we have dedicated beds in most of our emergency departments to cater for people with chronic mental illnesses. Finally, we have increased the number of mental health beds. When the current program is complete, there will be an extra 108 acute beds and 400 community beds. Dr J.M. Woollard interjected. Mr J.A. McGINTY : Member for Alfred Cove, the good news is that since we came to government in 2001, we have increased the number of full - time equivalent nurses to almost 2 000. Since coming to government, we have employed 1 900 extra full - time equivalent nurses. The employment of so many extra nurses has enabled us to cope so much better. PHYSIOTHERAPISTS ACT 2005 - REGISTRATION OF GRADUATES OF UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME AUSTRALIA 2. Mr T.K. WALDRON to the Minister for Health: I will ask this question with a bit more enthusiasm than the member who asked the previous question! I refer to the delay in the accreditation of the first batch of physiotherapy graduates from the University of Notre Dame Australia by the Australian Physiotherapy Council. (1) Does the minister agree that this delay has resulted in those graduates being unable to work as physiotherapists unless they are given conditional or provisional classes of registration under the Physiotherapists Act? (2) Does the minister agree that until the Physiotherapists Act 2005 is proclaimed, there is no legal clause to allow graduates to attain conditional or provisional registration to work? (3) How long will it take for the legal and legislative services division of the Western Australian Department of Health to complete the regulations and for the act to be proclaimed; and, what is the minister doing to expedite the proclamation of the Physiotherapists Act 2005? Mr J.A. McGINTY replied: I thank member for Wagin for some notice of this question and for his enthusiasm for physiotherapy and manipulation! (1) - (3) The University of Notre Dame Australia applied for accreditation for its physiotherapy course in August this year. This is where the problem arose. It normally takes about six months to accredit a course of this nature. The application came in very late, given that the current batch of graduates completed their course at the end of September. Effectively, the application for accreditation of the course was made only one month prior to the students’ graduation. I do not want to make any criticisms; it just happened that way. The Physiotherapists Registration Board of Western Australia cannot recognise this qualification from the University of Notre Dame for the purposes of registration until such time as it is an accredited course. The current physiotherapy legislation makes no provision for any provisional or conditional registrations of physiotherapists. Fortunately, last year this Parliament passed the Physiotherapists Act 2005, which provides for the provisional and conditional registration of physiotherapists. That power will come into effect after the act is proclaimed. The act has not been proclaimed because the regulations have not been drafted. In recent days I signed off on the drafting instructions for the regulations to accompany that act. Now that we have discovered that there is a problem for the graduates of the University of Notre Dame, I have instructed the Department of Health to give top priority to this matter and to move with expedition to draft the regulations. It has advised me that the first draft of those regulations should be ready within a week or two. I will give this issue top priority to ensure that the regulations are promulgated as soon as possible. That will enable the act to be proclaimed, and the new board will be given the power to grant conditional or provisional registration to the UND graduates to enable them to practise. It is my hope that that process will be completed within a matter of weeks, rather than months. I thank the member for drawing this matter to my attention. It will receive urgent consideration.
Mr J.A. McGINTY : I will briefly refer to a further five initiatives that have been undertaken to ease the pressure on our emergency departments. Firstly, six after-hours GP clinics have been established in conjunction with the emergency departments at our hospitals. So far this year those six GP clinics have treated 27 000 people, people who would have otherwise sought medical treatment from hospital emergency departments. This has freed up the capacity of emergency departments to deal with more seriously ill and injured patients. Second, the hospital in the home program is expanding dramatically to enable people, particularly those with chronic diseases, to be treated at home so that they do not require an expensive inpatient bed. Third, we have employed extra mental health staff to work in the emergency departments. Fourth, we have dedicated beds in most of our emergency departments to cater for people with chronic mental illnesses. Finally, we have increased the number of mental health beds. When the current program is complete, there will be an extra 108 acute beds and 400 community beds. Dr J.M. Woollard interjected. Mr J.A. McGINTY : Member for Alfred Cove, the good news is that since we came to government in 2001, we have increased the number of full - time equivalent nurses to almost 2 000. Since coming to government, we have employed 1 900 extra full - time equivalent nurses. The employment of so many extra nurses has enabled us to cope so much better. PHYSIOTHERAPISTS ACT 2005 - REGISTRATION OF GRADUATES OF UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME AUSTRALIA 2. Mr T.K. WALDRON to the Minister for Health: I will ask this question with a bit more enthusiasm than the member who asked the previous question! I refer to the delay in the accreditation of the first batch of physiotherapy graduates from the University of Notre Dame Australia by the Australian Physiotherapy Council. (1) Does the minister agree that this delay has resulted in those graduates being unable to work as physiotherapists unless they are given conditional or provisional classes of registration under the Physiotherapists Act? (2) Does the minister agree that until the Physiotherapists Act 2005 is proclaimed, there is no legal clause to allow graduates to attain conditional or provisional registration to work? (3) How long will it take for the legal and legislative services division of the Western Australian Department of Health to complete the regulations and for the act to be proclaimed; and, what is the minister doing to expedite the proclamation of the Physiotherapists Act 2005? Mr J.A. McGINTY replied: I thank member for Wagin for some notice of this question and for his enthusiasm for physiotherapy and manipulation! (1) - (3) The University of Notre Dame Australia applied for accreditation for its physiotherapy course in August this year. This is where the problem arose. It normally takes about six months to accredit a course of this nature. The application came in very late, given that the current batch of graduates completed their course at the end of September. Effectively, the application for accreditation of the course was made only one month prior to the students’ graduation. I do not want to make any criticisms; it just happened that way. The Physiotherapists Registration Board of Western Australia cannot recognise this qualification from the University of Notre Dame for the purposes of registration until such time as it is an accredited course. The current physiotherapy legislation makes no provision for any provisional or conditional registrations of physiotherapists. Fortunately, last year this Parliament passed the Physiotherapists Act 2005, which provides for the provisional and conditional registration of physiotherapists. That power will come into effect after the act is proclaimed. The act has not been proclaimed because the regulations have not been drafted. In recent days I signed off on the drafting instructions for the regulations to accompany that act. Now that we have discovered that there is a problem for the graduates of the University of Notre Dame, I have instructed the Department of Health to give top priority to this matter and to move with expedition to draft the regulations. It has advised me that the first draft of those regulations should be ready within a week or two. I will give this issue top priority to ensure that the regulations are promulgated as soon as possible. That will enable the act to be proclaimed, and the new board will be given the power to grant conditional or provisional registration to the UND graduates to enable them to practise. It is my hope that that process will be completed within a matter of weeks, rather than months. I thank the member for drawing this matter to my attention. It will receive urgent consideration.
Dr J.M. Woollard interjected. Mr J.A. McGINTY : Member for Alfred Cove, the good news is that since we came to government in 2001, we have increased the number of full - time equivalent nurses to almost 2 000. Since coming to government, we have employed 1 900 extra full - time equivalent nurses. The employment of so many extra nurses has enabled us to cope so much better. PHYSIOTHERAPISTS ACT 2005 - REGISTRATION OF GRADUATES OF UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME AUSTRALIA 2. Mr T.K. WALDRON to the Minister for Health: I will ask this question with a bit more enthusiasm than the member who asked the previous question! I refer to the delay in the accreditation of the first batch of physiotherapy graduates from the University of Notre Dame Australia by the Australian Physiotherapy Council. (1) Does the minister agree that this delay has resulted in those graduates being unable to work as physiotherapists unless they are given conditional or provisional classes of registration under the Physiotherapists Act? (2) Does the minister agree that until the Physiotherapists Act 2005 is proclaimed, there is no legal clause to allow graduates to attain conditional or provisional registration to work? (3) How long will it take for the legal and legislative services division of the Western Australian Department of Health to complete the regulations and for the act to be proclaimed; and, what is the minister doing to expedite the proclamation of the Physiotherapists Act 2005? Mr J.A. McGINTY replied: I thank member for Wagin for some notice of this question and for his enthusiasm for physiotherapy and manipulation! (1) - (3) The University of Notre Dame Australia applied for accreditation for its physiotherapy course in August this year. This is where the problem arose. It normally takes about six months to accredit a course of this nature. The application came in very late, given that the current batch of graduates completed their course at the end of September. Effectively, the application for accreditation of the course was made only one month prior to the students’ graduation. I do not want to make any criticisms; it just happened that way. The Physiotherapists Registration Board of Western Australia cannot recognise this qualification from the University of Notre Dame for the purposes of registration until such time as it is an accredited course. The current physiotherapy legislation makes no provision for any provisional or conditional registrations of physiotherapists. Fortunately, last year this Parliament passed the Physiotherapists Act 2005, which provides for the provisional and conditional registration of physiotherapists. That power will come into effect after the act is proclaimed. The act has not been proclaimed because the regulations have not been drafted. In recent days I signed off on the drafting instructions for the regulations to accompany that act. Now that we have discovered that there is a problem for the graduates of the University of Notre Dame, I have instructed the Department of Health to give top priority to this matter and to move with expedition to draft the regulations. It has advised me that the first draft of those regulations should be ready within a week or two. I will give this issue top priority to ensure that the regulations are promulgated as soon as possible. That will enable the act to be proclaimed, and the new board will be given the power to grant conditional or provisional registration to the UND graduates to enable them to practise. It is my hope that that process will be completed within a matter of weeks, rather than months. I thank the member for drawing this matter to my attention. It will receive urgent consideration.
Mr J.A. McGINTY : Member for Alfred Cove, the good news is that since we came to government in 2001, we have increased the number of full - time equivalent nurses to almost 2 000. Since coming to government, we have employed 1 900 extra full - time equivalent nurses. The employment of so many extra nurses has enabled us to cope so much better. PHYSIOTHERAPISTS ACT 2005 - REGISTRATION OF GRADUATES OF UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME AUSTRALIA 2. Mr T.K. WALDRON to the Minister for Health: I will ask this question with a bit more enthusiasm than the member who asked the previous question! I refer to the delay in the accreditation of the first batch of physiotherapy graduates from the University of Notre Dame Australia by the Australian Physiotherapy Council. (1) Does the minister agree that this delay has resulted in those graduates being unable to work as physiotherapists unless they are given conditional or provisional classes of registration under the Physiotherapists Act? (2) Does the minister agree that until the Physiotherapists Act 2005 is proclaimed, there is no legal clause to allow graduates to attain conditional or provisional registration to work? (3) How long will it take for the legal and legislative services division of the Western Australian Department of Health to complete the regulations and for the act to be proclaimed; and, what is the minister doing to expedite the proclamation of the Physiotherapists Act 2005? Mr J.A. McGINTY replied: I thank member for Wagin for some notice of this question and for his enthusiasm for physiotherapy and manipulation! (1) - (3) The University of Notre Dame Australia applied for accreditation for its physiotherapy course in August this year. This is where the problem arose. It normally takes about six months to accredit a course of this nature. The application came in very late, given that the current batch of graduates completed their course at the end of September. Effectively, the application for accreditation of the course was made only one month prior to the students’ graduation. I do not want to make any criticisms; it just happened that way. The Physiotherapists Registration Board of Western Australia cannot recognise this qualification from the University of Notre Dame for the purposes of registration until such time as it is an accredited course. The current physiotherapy legislation makes no provision for any provisional or conditional registrations of physiotherapists. Fortunately, last year this Parliament passed the Physiotherapists Act 2005, which provides for the provisional and conditional registration of physiotherapists. That power will come into effect after the act is proclaimed. The act has not been proclaimed because the regulations have not been drafted. In recent days I signed off on the drafting instructions for the regulations to accompany that act. Now that we have discovered that there is a problem for the graduates of the University of Notre Dame, I have instructed the Department of Health to give top priority to this matter and to move with expedition to draft the regulations. It has advised me that the first draft of those regulations should be ready within a week or two. I will give this issue top priority to ensure that the regulations are promulgated as soon as possible. That will enable the act to be proclaimed, and the new board will be given the power to grant conditional or provisional registration to the UND graduates to enable them to practise. It is my hope that that process will be completed within a matter of weeks, rather than months. I thank the member for drawing this matter to my attention. It will receive urgent consideration.
I will ask this question with a bit more enthusiasm than the member who asked the previous question! I refer to the delay in the accreditation of the first batch of physiotherapy graduates from the University of Notre Dame Australia by the Australian Physiotherapy Council. (1) Does the minister agree that this delay has resulted in those graduates being unable to work as physiotherapists unless they are given conditional or provisional classes of registration under the Physiotherapists Act? (2) Does the minister agree that until the Physiotherapists Act 2005 is proclaimed, there is no legal clause to allow graduates to attain conditional or provisional registration to work? (3) How long will it take for the legal and legislative services division of the Western Australian Department of Health to complete the regulations and for the act to be proclaimed; and, what is the minister doing to expedite the proclamation of the Physiotherapists Act 2005? Mr J.A. McGINTY replied: I thank member for Wagin for some notice of this question and for his enthusiasm for physiotherapy and manipulation! (1) - (3) The University of Notre Dame Australia applied for accreditation for its physiotherapy course in August this year. This is where the problem arose. It normally takes about six months to accredit a course of this nature. The application came in very late, given that the current batch of graduates completed their course at the end of September. Effectively, the application for accreditation of the course was made only one month prior to the students’ graduation. I do not want to make any criticisms; it just happened that way. The Physiotherapists Registration Board of Western Australia cannot recognise this qualification from the University of Notre Dame for the purposes of registration until such time as it is an accredited course. The current physiotherapy legislation makes no provision for any provisional or conditional registrations of physiotherapists. Fortunately, last year this Parliament passed the Physiotherapists Act 2005, which provides for the provisional and conditional registration of physiotherapists. That power will come into effect after the act is proclaimed. The act has not been proclaimed because the regulations have not been drafted. In recent days I signed off on the drafting instructions for the regulations to accompany that act. Now that we have discovered that there is a problem for the graduates of the University of Notre Dame, I have instructed the Department of Health to give top priority to this matter and to move with expedition to draft the regulations. It has advised me that the first draft of those regulations should be ready within a week or two. I will give this issue top priority to ensure that the regulations are promulgated as soon as possible. That will enable the act to be proclaimed, and the new board will be given the power to grant conditional or provisional registration to the UND graduates to enable them to practise. It is my hope that that process will be completed within a matter of weeks, rather than months. I thank the member for drawing this matter to my attention. It will receive urgent consideration.
I refer to the delay in the accreditation of the first batch of physiotherapy graduates from the University of Notre Dame Australia by the Australian Physiotherapy Council. (1) Does the minister agree that this delay has resulted in those graduates being unable to work as physiotherapists unless they are given conditional or provisional classes of registration under the Physiotherapists Act? (2) Does the minister agree that until the Physiotherapists Act 2005 is proclaimed, there is no legal clause to allow graduates to attain conditional or provisional registration to work? (3) How long will it take for the legal and legislative services division of the Western Australian Department of Health to complete the regulations and for the act to be proclaimed; and, what is the minister doing to expedite the proclamation of the Physiotherapists Act 2005? Mr J.A. McGINTY replied: I thank member for Wagin for some notice of this question and for his enthusiasm for physiotherapy and manipulation! (1) - (3) The University of Notre Dame Australia applied for accreditation for its physiotherapy course in August this year. This is where the problem arose. It normally takes about six months to accredit a course of this nature. The application came in very late, given that the current batch of graduates completed their course at the end of September. Effectively, the application for accreditation of the course was made only one month prior to the students’ graduation. I do not want to make any criticisms; it just happened that way. The Physiotherapists Registration Board of Western Australia cannot recognise this qualification from the University of Notre Dame for the purposes of registration until such time as it is an accredited course. The current physiotherapy legislation makes no provision for any provisional or conditional registrations of physiotherapists. Fortunately, last year this Parliament passed the Physiotherapists Act 2005, which provides for the provisional and conditional registration of physiotherapists. That power will come into effect after the act is proclaimed. The act has not been proclaimed because the regulations have not been drafted. In recent days I signed off on the drafting instructions for the regulations to accompany that act. Now that we have discovered that there is a problem for the graduates of the University of Notre Dame, I have instructed the Department of Health to give top priority to this matter and to move with expedition to draft the regulations. It has advised me that the first draft of those regulations should be ready within a week or two. I will give this issue top priority to ensure that the regulations are promulgated as soon as possible. That will enable the act to be proclaimed, and the new board will be given the power to grant conditional or provisional registration to the UND graduates to enable them to practise. It is my hope that that process will be completed within a matter of weeks, rather than months. I thank the member for drawing this matter to my attention. It will receive urgent consideration.
(1) Does the minister agree that this delay has resulted in those graduates being unable to work as physiotherapists unless they are given conditional or provisional classes of registration under the Physiotherapists Act? (2) Does the minister agree that until the Physiotherapists Act 2005 is proclaimed, there is no legal clause to allow graduates to attain conditional or provisional registration to work? (3) How long will it take for the legal and legislative services division of the Western Australian Department of Health to complete the regulations and for the act to be proclaimed; and, what is the minister doing to expedite the proclamation of the Physiotherapists Act 2005? Mr J.A. McGINTY replied: I thank member for Wagin for some notice of this question and for his enthusiasm for physiotherapy and manipulation! (1) - (3) The University of Notre Dame Australia applied for accreditation for its physiotherapy course in August this year. This is where the problem arose. It normally takes about six months to accredit a course of this nature. The application came in very late, given that the current batch of graduates completed their course at the end of September. Effectively, the application for accreditation of the course was made only one month prior to the students’ graduation. I do not want to make any criticisms; it just happened that way. The Physiotherapists Registration Board of Western Australia cannot recognise this qualification from the University of Notre Dame for the purposes of registration until such time as it is an accredited course. The current physiotherapy legislation makes no provision for any provisional or conditional registrations of physiotherapists. Fortunately, last year this Parliament passed the Physiotherapists Act 2005, which provides for the provisional and conditional registration of physiotherapists. That power will come into effect after the act is proclaimed. The act has not been proclaimed because the regulations have not been drafted. In recent days I signed off on the drafting instructions for the regulations to accompany that act. Now that we have discovered that there is a problem for the graduates of the University of Notre Dame, I have instructed the Department of Health to give top priority to this matter and to move with expedition to draft the regulations. It has advised me that the first draft of those regulations should be ready within a week or two. I will give this issue top priority to ensure that the regulations are promulgated as soon as possible. That will enable the act to be proclaimed, and the new board will be given the power to grant conditional or provisional registration to the UND graduates to enable them to practise. It is my hope that that process will be completed within a matter of weeks, rather than months. I thank the member for drawing this matter to my attention. It will receive urgent consideration.
(2) Does the minister agree that until the Physiotherapists Act 2005 is proclaimed, there is no legal clause to allow graduates to attain conditional or provisional registration to work? (3) How long will it take for the legal and legislative services division of the Western Australian Department of Health to complete the regulations and for the act to be proclaimed; and, what is the minister doing to expedite the proclamation of the Physiotherapists Act 2005? Mr J.A. McGINTY replied: I thank member for Wagin for some notice of this question and for his enthusiasm for physiotherapy and manipulation! (1) - (3) The University of Notre Dame Australia applied for accreditation for its physiotherapy course in August this year. This is where the problem arose. It normally takes about six months to accredit a course of this nature. The application came in very late, given that the current batch of graduates completed their course at the end of September. Effectively, the application for accreditation of the course was made only one month prior to the students’ graduation. I do not want to make any criticisms; it just happened that way. The Physiotherapists Registration Board of Western Australia cannot recognise this qualification from the University of Notre Dame for the purposes of registration until such time as it is an accredited course. The current physiotherapy legislation makes no provision for any provisional or conditional registrations of physiotherapists. Fortunately, last year this Parliament passed the Physiotherapists Act 2005, which provides for the provisional and conditional registration of physiotherapists. That power will come into effect after the act is proclaimed. The act has not been proclaimed because the regulations have not been drafted. In recent days I signed off on the drafting instructions for the regulations to accompany that act. Now that we have discovered that there is a problem for the graduates of the University of Notre Dame, I have instructed the Department of Health to give top priority to this matter and to move with expedition to draft the regulations. It has advised me that the first draft of those regulations should be ready within a week or two. I will give this issue top priority to ensure that the regulations are promulgated as soon as possible. That will enable the act to be proclaimed, and the new board will be given the power to grant conditional or provisional registration to the UND graduates to enable them to practise. It is my hope that that process will be completed within a matter of weeks, rather than months. I thank the member for drawing this matter to my attention. It will receive urgent consideration.
(3) How long will it take for the legal and legislative services division of the Western Australian Department of Health to complete the regulations and for the act to be proclaimed; and, what is the minister doing to expedite the proclamation of the Physiotherapists Act 2005? Mr J.A. McGINTY replied: I thank member for Wagin for some notice of this question and for his enthusiasm for physiotherapy and manipulation! (1) - (3) The University of Notre Dame Australia applied for accreditation for its physiotherapy course in August this year. This is where the problem arose. It normally takes about six months to accredit a course of this nature. The application came in very late, given that the current batch of graduates completed their course at the end of September. Effectively, the application for accreditation of the course was made only one month prior to the students’ graduation. I do not want to make any criticisms; it just happened that way. The Physiotherapists Registration Board of Western Australia cannot recognise this qualification from the University of Notre Dame for the purposes of registration until such time as it is an accredited course. The current physiotherapy legislation makes no provision for any provisional or conditional registrations of physiotherapists. Fortunately, last year this Parliament passed the Physiotherapists Act 2005, which provides for the provisional and conditional registration of physiotherapists. That power will come into effect after the act is proclaimed. The act has not been proclaimed because the regulations have not been drafted. In recent days I signed off on the drafting instructions for the regulations to accompany that act. Now that we have discovered that there is a problem for the graduates of the University of Notre Dame, I have instructed the Department of Health to give top priority to this matter and to move with expedition to draft the regulations. It has advised me that the first draft of those regulations should be ready within a week or two. I will give this issue top priority to ensure that the regulations are promulgated as soon as possible. That will enable the act to be proclaimed, and the new board will be given the power to grant conditional or provisional registration to the UND graduates to enable them to practise. It is my hope that that process will be completed within a matter of weeks, rather than months. I thank the member for drawing this matter to my attention. It will receive urgent consideration.
Mr J.A. McGINTY replied: I thank member for Wagin for some notice of this question and for his enthusiasm for physiotherapy and manipulation! (1) - (3) The University of Notre Dame Australia applied for accreditation for its physiotherapy course in August this year. This is where the problem arose. It normally takes about six months to accredit a course of this nature. The application came in very late, given that the current batch of graduates completed their course at the end of September. Effectively, the application for accreditation of the course was made only one month prior to the students’ graduation. I do not want to make any criticisms; it just happened that way. The Physiotherapists Registration Board of Western Australia cannot recognise this qualification from the University of Notre Dame for the purposes of registration until such time as it is an accredited course. The current physiotherapy legislation makes no provision for any provisional or conditional registrations of physiotherapists. Fortunately, last year this Parliament passed the Physiotherapists Act 2005, which provides for the provisional and conditional registration of physiotherapists. That power will come into effect after the act is proclaimed. The act has not been proclaimed because the regulations have not been drafted. In recent days I signed off on the drafting instructions for the regulations to accompany that act. Now that we have discovered that there is a problem for the graduates of the University of Notre Dame, I have instructed the Department of Health to give top priority to this matter and to move with expedition to draft the regulations. It has advised me that the first draft of those regulations should be ready within a week or two. I will give this issue top priority to ensure that the regulations are promulgated as soon as possible. That will enable the act to be proclaimed, and the new board will be given the power to grant conditional or provisional registration to the UND graduates to enable them to practise. It is my hope that that process will be completed within a matter of weeks, rather than months. I thank the member for drawing this matter to my attention. It will receive urgent consideration.
I thank member for Wagin for some notice of this question and for his enthusiasm for physiotherapy and manipulation! (1) - (3) The University of Notre Dame Australia applied for accreditation for its physiotherapy course in August this year. This is where the problem arose. It normally takes about six months to accredit a course of this nature. The application came in very late, given that the current batch of graduates completed their course at the end of September. Effectively, the application for accreditation of the course was made only one month prior to the students’ graduation. I do not want to make any criticisms; it just happened that way. The Physiotherapists Registration Board of Western Australia cannot recognise this qualification from the University of Notre Dame for the purposes of registration until such time as it is an accredited course. The current physiotherapy legislation makes no provision for any provisional or conditional registrations of physiotherapists. Fortunately, last year this Parliament passed the Physiotherapists Act 2005, which provides for the provisional and conditional registration of physiotherapists. That power will come into effect after the act is proclaimed. The act has not been proclaimed because the regulations have not been drafted. In recent days I signed off on the drafting instructions for the regulations to accompany that act. Now that we have discovered that there is a problem for the graduates of the University of Notre Dame, I have instructed the Department of Health to give top priority to this matter and to move with expedition to draft the regulations. It has advised me that the first draft of those regulations should be ready within a week or two. I will give this issue top priority to ensure that the regulations are promulgated as soon as possible. That will enable the act to be proclaimed, and the new board will be given the power to grant conditional or provisional registration to the UND graduates to enable them to practise. It is my hope that that process will be completed within a matter of weeks, rather than months. I thank the member for drawing this matter to my attention. It will receive urgent consideration.
(1) - (3) The University of Notre Dame Australia applied for accreditation for its physiotherapy course in August this year. This is where the problem arose. It normally takes about six months to accredit a course of this nature. The application came in very late, given that the current batch of graduates completed their course at the end of September. Effectively, the application for accreditation of the course was made only one month prior to the students’ graduation. I do not want to make any criticisms; it just happened that way. The Physiotherapists Registration Board of Western Australia cannot recognise this qualification from the University of Notre Dame for the purposes of registration until such time as it is an accredited course. The current physiotherapy legislation makes no provision for any provisional or conditional registrations of physiotherapists. Fortunately, last year this Parliament passed the Physiotherapists Act 2005, which provides for the provisional and conditional registration of physiotherapists. That power will come into effect after the act is proclaimed. The act has not been proclaimed because the regulations have not been drafted. In recent days I signed off on the drafting instructions for the regulations to accompany that act. Now that we have discovered that there is a problem for the graduates of the University of Notre Dame, I have instructed the Department of Health to give top priority to this matter and to move with expedition to draft the regulations. It has advised me that the first draft of those regulations should be ready within a week or two. I will give this issue top priority to ensure that the regulations are promulgated as soon as possible. That will enable the act to be proclaimed, and the new board will be given the power to grant conditional or provisional registration to the UND graduates to enable them to practise. It is my hope that that process will be completed within a matter of weeks, rather than months. I thank the member for drawing this matter to my attention. It will receive urgent consideration.
Mr J.A. McGINTY replied: Mr Speaker - Several members interjected. The SPEAKER : Order, members! Mr J.A. McGINTY : I thank the member for Perth for his ongoing interest in emergency management. I take this opportunity to congratulate four groups of people - the doctors who work in our emergency departments, the nurses who work in our emergency departments, the St John Ambulance Association, and the administration of our public hospitals - for what has been a resounding success during the 12-week trial in our emergency departments. The trial was designed to eliminate, or at least significantly reduce, the incidence of ambulance diversion and ramping at the period of peak demand in our emergency departments. The trial commenced on 10 July. It was such a success that it has been extended for a further eight weeks until 26 November. I am very pleased to report to the house that the trial resulted in zero episodes of ambulance diversion at the tertiary hospitals. That is quite a remarkable achievement. Between July and October last year - in other words, the peak winter months - the three major hospital emergency departments spent 123 hours on diversion. This year they did not spend one second on ambulance diversion, which is a great success. Several members interjected. Mr J.A. McGINTY : Why do members opposite not like the fact that things are going well? Members opposite are such a miserable mob. Even though the government has eliminated ambulance diversions from our teaching hospital emergency departments, those opposite are whingeing! Look at them all. They should join with me in celebrating a great success and pat our doctors, nurses and ambulance service on the back for the great job that they have done. Mr T. Buswell : What about the orderlies who push patients around the corridors all day? Mr J.A. McGINTY : I really feel sorry for members opposite. I hope that they stay in opposition for a long time, because that is their rightful position. The second thing that emerged from this very important trial, which was initiated by the emergency departments themselves, was a 77 per cent reduction in the frequency of ambulance ramping from 57 hours last year to 12.85 hours this year for the comparable period. Ambulance ramping is when an ambulance is at a hospital for longer than 20 minutes after it has brought in a patient. One of the mechanisms used by the doctors and nurses in the emergency departments is what is referred to as ward over-census policy, which effectively creates temporary additional capacity on the wards to enable the emergency department to move admitted patients to the wards in anticipation of a patient discharge at times of peak demand. This is a great example of our very dedicated staff working in the emergency departments coming together for the good of patients. I table the report entitled “‘No ramping/No Diversion’ Trial Final Report”. [See paper 2146]. Mr J.A. McGINTY : I will briefly refer to a further five initiatives that have been undertaken to ease the pressure on our emergency departments. Firstly, six after-hours GP clinics have been established in conjunction with the emergency departments at our hospitals. So far this year those six GP clinics have treated 27 000 people, people who would have otherwise sought medical treatment from hospital emergency departments. This has freed up the capacity of emergency departments to deal with more seriously ill and injured patients. Second, the hospital in the home program is expanding dramatically to enable people, particularly those with chronic diseases, to be treated at home so that they do not require an expensive inpatient bed. Third, we have employed extra mental health staff to work in the emergency departments. Fourth, we have dedicated beds in most of our emergency departments to cater for people with chronic mental illnesses. Finally, we have increased the number of mental health beds. When the current program is complete, there will be an extra 108 acute beds and 400 community beds. Dr J.M. Woollard interjected. Mr J.A. McGINTY : Member for Alfred Cove, the good news is that since we came to government in 2001, we have increased the number of full - time equivalent nurses to almost 2 000. Since coming to government, we have employed 1 900 extra full - time equivalent nurses. The employment of so many extra nurses has enabled us to cope so much better. PHYSIOTHERAPISTS ACT 2005 - REGISTRATION OF GRADUATES OF UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME AUSTRALIA 2. Mr T.K. WALDRON to the Minister for Health: I will ask this question with a bit more enthusiasm than the member who asked the previous question! I refer to the delay in the accreditation of the first batch of physiotherapy graduates from the University of Notre Dame Australia by the Australian Physiotherapy Council. (1) Does the minister agree that this delay has resulted in those graduates being unable to work as physiotherapists unless they are given conditional or provisional classes of registration under the Physiotherapists Act? (2) Does the minister agree that until the Physiotherapists Act 2005 is proclaimed, there is no legal clause to allow graduates to attain conditional or provisional registration to work? (3) How long will it take for the legal and legislative services division of the Western Australian Department of Health to complete the regulations and for the act to be proclaimed; and, what is the minister doing to expedite the proclamation of the Physiotherapists Act 2005? Mr J.A. McGINTY replied: I thank member for Wagin for some notice of this question and for his enthusiasm for physiotherapy and manipulation! (1) - (3) The University of Notre Dame Australia applied for accreditation for its physiotherapy course in August this year. This is where the problem arose. It normally takes about six months to accredit a course of this nature. The application came in very late, given that the current batch of graduates completed their course at the end of September. Effectively, the application for accreditation of the course was made only one month prior to the students’ graduation. I do not want to make any criticisms; it just happened that way. The Physiotherapists Registration Board of Western Australia cannot recognise this qualification from the University of Notre Dame for the purposes of registration until such time as it is an accredited course. The current physiotherapy legislation makes no provision for any provisional or conditional registrations of physiotherapists. Fortunately, last year this Parliament passed the Physiotherapists Act 2005, which provides for the provisional and conditional registration of physiotherapists. That power will come into effect after the act is proclaimed. The act has not been proclaimed because the regulations have not been drafted. In recent days I signed off on the drafting instructions for the regulations to accompany that act. Now that we have discovered that there is a problem for the graduates of the University of Notre Dame, I have instructed the Department of Health to give top priority to this matter and to move with expedition to draft the regulations. It has advised me that the first draft of those regulations should be ready within a week or two. I will give this issue top priority to ensure that the regulations are promulgated as soon as possible. That will enable the act to be proclaimed, and the new board will be given the power to grant conditional or provisional registration to the UND graduates to enable them to practise. It is my hope that that process will be completed within a matter of weeks, rather than months. I thank the member for drawing this matter to my attention. It will receive urgent consideration.
Mr Speaker - Several members interjected. The SPEAKER : Order, members! Mr J.A. McGINTY : I thank the member for Perth for his ongoing interest in emergency management. I take this opportunity to congratulate four groups of people - the doctors who work in our emergency departments, the nurses who work in our emergency departments, the St John Ambulance Association, and the administration of our public hospitals - for what has been a resounding success during the 12-week trial in our emergency departments. The trial was designed to eliminate, or at least significantly reduce, the incidence of ambulance diversion and ramping at the period of peak demand in our emergency departments. The trial commenced on 10 July. It was such a success that it has been extended for a further eight weeks until 26 November. I am very pleased to report to the house that the trial resulted in zero episodes of ambulance diversion at the tertiary hospitals. That is quite a remarkable achievement. Between July and October last year - in other words, the peak winter months - the three major hospital emergency departments spent 123 hours on diversion. This year they did not spend one second on ambulance diversion, which is a great success. Several members interjected. Mr J.A. McGINTY : Why do members opposite not like the fact that things are going well? Members opposite are such a miserable mob. Even though the government has eliminated ambulance diversions from our teaching hospital emergency departments, those opposite are whingeing! Look at them all. They should join with me in celebrating a great success and pat our doctors, nurses and ambulance service on the back for the great job that they have done. Mr T. Buswell : What about the orderlies who push patients around the corridors all day? Mr J.A. McGINTY : I really feel sorry for members opposite. I hope that they stay in opposition for a long time, because that is their rightful position. The second thing that emerged from this very important trial, which was initiated by the emergency departments themselves, was a 77 per cent reduction in the frequency of ambulance ramping from 57 hours last year to 12.85 hours this year for the comparable period. Ambulance ramping is when an ambulance is at a hospital for longer than 20 minutes after it has brought in a patient. One of the mechanisms used by the doctors and nurses in the emergency departments is what is referred to as ward over-census policy, which effectively creates temporary additional capacity on the wards to enable the emergency department to move admitted patients to the wards in anticipation of a patient discharge at times of peak demand. This is a great example of our very dedicated staff working in the emergency departments coming together for the good of patients. I table the report entitled “‘No ramping/No Diversion’ Trial Final Report”. [See paper 2146]. Mr J.A. McGINTY : I will briefly refer to a further five initiatives that have been undertaken to ease the pressure on our emergency departments. Firstly, six after-hours GP clinics have been established in conjunction with the emergency departments at our hospitals. So far this year those six GP clinics have treated 27 000 people, people who would have otherwise sought medical treatment from hospital emergency departments. This has freed up the capacity of emergency departments to deal with more seriously ill and injured patients. Second, the hospital in the home program is expanding dramatically to enable people, particularly those with chronic diseases, to be treated at home so that they do not require an expensive inpatient bed. Third, we have employed extra mental health staff to work in the emergency departments. Fourth, we have dedicated beds in most of our emergency departments to cater for people with chronic mental illnesses. Finally, we have increased the number of mental health beds. When the current program is complete, there will be an extra 108 acute beds and 400 community beds. Dr J.M. Woollard interjected. Mr J.A. McGINTY : Member for Alfred Cove, the good news is that since we came to government in 2001, we have increased the number of full - time equivalent nurses to almost 2 000. Since coming to government, we have employed 1 900 extra full - time equivalent nurses. The employment of so many extra nurses has enabled us to cope so much better. PHYSIOTHERAPISTS ACT 2005 - REGISTRATION OF GRADUATES OF UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME AUSTRALIA 2. Mr T.K. WALDRON to the Minister for Health: I will ask this question with a bit more enthusiasm than the member who asked the previous question! I refer to the delay in the accreditation of the first batch of physiotherapy graduates from the University of Notre Dame Australia by the Australian Physiotherapy Council. (1) Does the minister agree that this delay has resulted in those graduates being unable to work as physiotherapists unless they are given conditional or provisional classes of registration under the Physiotherapists Act? (2) Does the minister agree that until the Physiotherapists Act 2005 is proclaimed, there is no legal clause to allow graduates to attain conditional or provisional registration to work? (3) How long will it take for the legal and legislative services division of the Western Australian Department of Health to complete the regulations and for the act to be proclaimed; and, what is the minister doing to expedite the proclamation of the Physiotherapists Act 2005? Mr J.A. McGINTY replied: I thank member for Wagin for some notice of this question and for his enthusiasm for physiotherapy and manipulation! (1) - (3) The University of Notre Dame Australia applied for accreditation for its physiotherapy course in August this year. This is where the problem arose. It normally takes about six months to accredit a course of this nature. The application came in very late, given that the current batch of graduates completed their course at the end of September. Effectively, the application for accreditation of the course was made only one month prior to the students’ graduation. I do not want to make any criticisms; it just happened that way. The Physiotherapists Registration Board of Western Australia cannot recognise this qualification from the University of Notre Dame for the purposes of registration until such time as it is an accredited course. The current physiotherapy legislation makes no provision for any provisional or conditional registrations of physiotherapists. Fortunately, last year this Parliament passed the Physiotherapists Act 2005, which provides for the provisional and conditional registration of physiotherapists. That power will come into effect after the act is proclaimed. The act has not been proclaimed because the regulations have not been drafted. In recent days I signed off on the drafting instructions for the regulations to accompany that act. Now that we have discovered that there is a problem for the graduates of the University of Notre Dame, I have instructed the Department of Health to give top priority to this matter and to move with expedition to draft the regulations. It has advised me that the first draft of those regulations should be ready within a week or two. I will give this issue top priority to ensure that the regulations are promulgated as soon as possible. That will enable the act to be proclaimed, and the new board will be given the power to grant conditional or provisional registration to the UND graduates to enable them to practise. It is my hope that that process will be completed within a matter of weeks, rather than months. I thank the member for drawing this matter to my attention. It will receive urgent consideration.
Several members interjected. The SPEAKER : Order, members! Mr J.A. McGINTY : I thank the member for Perth for his ongoing interest in emergency management. I take this opportunity to congratulate four groups of people - the doctors who work in our emergency departments, the nurses who work in our emergency departments, the St John Ambulance Association, and the administration of our public hospitals - for what has been a resounding success during the 12-week trial in our emergency departments. The trial was designed to eliminate, or at least significantly reduce, the incidence of ambulance diversion and ramping at the period of peak demand in our emergency departments. The trial commenced on 10 July. It was such a success that it has been extended for a further eight weeks until 26 November. I am very pleased to report to the house that the trial resulted in zero episodes of ambulance diversion at the tertiary hospitals. That is quite a remarkable achievement. Between July and October last year - in other words, the peak winter months - the three major hospital emergency departments spent 123 hours on diversion. This year they did not spend one second on ambulance diversion, which is a great success. Several members interjected. Mr J.A. McGINTY : Why do members opposite not like the fact that things are going well? Members opposite are such a miserable mob. Even though the government has eliminated ambulance diversions from our teaching hospital emergency departments, those opposite are whingeing! Look at them all. They should join with me in celebrating a great success and pat our doctors, nurses and ambulance service on the back for the great job that they have done. Mr T. Buswell : What about the orderlies who push patients around the corridors all day? Mr J.A. McGINTY : I really feel sorry for members opposite. I hope that they stay in opposition for a long time, because that is their rightful position. The second thing that emerged from this very important trial, which was initiated by the emergency departments themselves, was a 77 per cent reduction in the frequency of ambulance ramping from 57 hours last year to 12.85 hours this year for the comparable period. Ambulance ramping is when an ambulance is at a hospital for longer than 20 minutes after it has brought in a patient. One of the mechanisms used by the doctors and nurses in the emergency departments is what is referred to as ward over-census policy, which effectively creates temporary additional capacity on the wards to enable the emergency department to move admitted patients to the wards in anticipation of a patient discharge at times of peak demand. This is a great example of our very dedicated staff working in the emergency departments coming together for the good of patients. I table the report entitled “‘No ramping/No Diversion’ Trial Final Report”. [See paper 2146]. Mr J.A. McGINTY : I will briefly refer to a further five initiatives that have been undertaken to ease the pressure on our emergency departments. Firstly, six after-hours GP clinics have been established in conjunction with the emergency departments at our hospitals. So far this year those six GP clinics have treated 27 000 people, people who would have otherwise sought medical treatment from hospital emergency departments. This has freed up the capacity of emergency departments to deal with more seriously ill and injured patients. Second, the hospital in the home program is expanding dramatically to enable people, particularly those with chronic diseases, to be treated at home so that they do not require an expensive inpatient bed. Third, we have employed extra mental health staff to work in the emergency departments. Fourth, we have dedicated beds in most of our emergency departments to cater for people with chronic mental illnesses. Finally, we have increased the number of mental health beds. When the current program is complete, there will be an extra 108 acute beds and 400 community beds. Dr J.M. Woollard interjected. Mr J.A. McGINTY : Member for Alfred Cove, the good news is that since we came to government in 2001, we have increased the number of full - time equivalent nurses to almost 2 000. Since coming to government, we have employed 1 900 extra full - time equivalent nurses. The employment of so many extra nurses has enabled us to cope so much better. PHYSIOTHERAPISTS ACT 2005 - REGISTRATION OF GRADUATES OF UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME AUSTRALIA 2. Mr T.K. WALDRON to the Minister for Health: I will ask this question with a bit more enthusiasm than the member who asked the previous question! I refer to the delay in the accreditation of the first batch of physiotherapy graduates from the University of Notre Dame Australia by the Australian Physiotherapy Council. (1) Does the minister agree that this delay has resulted in those graduates being unable to work as physiotherapists unless they are given conditional or provisional classes of registration under the Physiotherapists Act? (2) Does the minister agree that until the Physiotherapists Act 2005 is proclaimed, there is no legal clause to allow graduates to attain conditional or provisional registration to work? (3) How long will it take for the legal and legislative services division of the Western Australian Department of Health to complete the regulations and for the act to be proclaimed; and, what is the minister doing to expedite the proclamation of the Physiotherapists Act 2005? Mr J.A. McGINTY replied: I thank member for Wagin for some notice of this question and for his enthusiasm for physiotherapy and manipulation! (1) - (3) The University of Notre Dame Australia applied for accreditation for its physiotherapy course in August this year. This is where the problem arose. It normally takes about six months to accredit a course of this nature. The application came in very late, given that the current batch of graduates completed their course at the end of September. Effectively, the application for accreditation of the course was made only one month prior to the students’ graduation. I do not want to make any criticisms; it just happened that way. The Physiotherapists Registration Board of Western Australia cannot recognise this qualification from the University of Notre Dame for the purposes of registration until such time as it is an accredited course. The current physiotherapy legislation makes no provision for any provisional or conditional registrations of physiotherapists. Fortunately, last year this Parliament passed the Physiotherapists Act 2005, which provides for the provisional and conditional registration of physiotherapists. That power will come into effect after the act is proclaimed. The act has not been proclaimed because the regulations have not been drafted. In recent days I signed off on the drafting instructions for the regulations to accompany that act. Now that we have discovered that there is a problem for the graduates of the University of Notre Dame, I have instructed the Department of Health to give top priority to this matter and to move with expedition to draft the regulations. It has advised me that the first draft of those regulations should be ready within a week or two. I will give this issue top priority to ensure that the regulations are promulgated as soon as possible. That will enable the act to be proclaimed, and the new board will be given the power to grant conditional or provisional registration to the UND graduates to enable them to practise. It is my hope that that process will be completed within a matter of weeks, rather than months. I thank the member for drawing this matter to my attention. It will receive urgent consideration.
The SPEAKER : Order, members! Mr J.A. McGINTY : I thank the member for Perth for his ongoing interest in emergency management. I take this opportunity to congratulate four groups of people - the doctors who work in our emergency departments, the nurses who work in our emergency departments, the St John Ambulance Association, and the administration of our public hospitals - for what has been a resounding success during the 12-week trial in our emergency departments. The trial was designed to eliminate, or at least significantly reduce, the incidence of ambulance diversion and ramping at the period of peak demand in our emergency departments. The trial commenced on 10 July. It was such a success that it has been extended for a further eight weeks until 26 November. I am very pleased to report to the house that the trial resulted in zero episodes of ambulance diversion at the tertiary hospitals. That is quite a remarkable achievement. Between July and October last year - in other words, the peak winter months - the three major hospital emergency departments spent 123 hours on diversion. This year they did not spend one second on ambulance diversion, which is a great success. Several members interjected. Mr J.A. McGINTY : Why do members opposite not like the fact that things are going well? Members opposite are such a miserable mob. Even though the government has eliminated ambulance diversions from our teaching hospital emergency departments, those opposite are whingeing! Look at them all. They should join with me in celebrating a great success and pat our doctors, nurses and ambulance service on the back for the great job that they have done. Mr T. Buswell : What about the orderlies who push patients around the corridors all day? Mr J.A. McGINTY : I really feel sorry for members opposite. I hope that they stay in opposition for a long time, because that is their rightful position. The second thing that emerged from this very important trial, which was initiated by the emergency departments themselves, was a 77 per cent reduction in the frequency of ambulance ramping from 57 hours last year to 12.85 hours this year for the comparable period. Ambulance ramping is when an ambulance is at a hospital for longer than 20 minutes after it has brought in a patient. One of the mechanisms used by the doctors and nurses in the emergency departments is what is referred to as ward over-census policy, which effectively creates temporary additional capacity on the wards to enable the emergency department to move admitted patients to the wards in anticipation of a patient discharge at times of peak demand. This is a great example of our very dedicated staff working in the emergency departments coming together for the good of patients. I table the report entitled “‘No ramping/No Diversion’ Trial Final Report”. [See paper 2146]. Mr J.A. McGINTY : I will briefly refer to a further five initiatives that have been undertaken to ease the pressure on our emergency departments. Firstly, six after-hours GP clinics have been established in conjunction with the emergency departments at our hospitals. So far this year those six GP clinics have treated 27 000 people, people who would have otherwise sought medical treatment from hospital emergency departments. This has freed up the capacity of emergency departments to deal with more seriously ill and injured patients. Second, the hospital in the home program is expanding dramatically to enable people, particularly those with chronic diseases, to be treated at home so that they do not require an expensive inpatient bed. Third, we have employed extra mental health staff to work in the emergency departments. Fourth, we have dedicated beds in most of our emergency departments to cater for people with chronic mental illnesses. Finally, we have increased the number of mental health beds. When the current program is complete, there will be an extra 108 acute beds and 400 community beds. Dr J.M. Woollard interjected. Mr J.A. McGINTY : Member for Alfred Cove, the good news is that since we came to government in 2001, we have increased the number of full - time equivalent nurses to almost 2 000. Since coming to government, we have employed 1 900 extra full - time equivalent nurses. The employment of so many extra nurses has enabled us to cope so much better. PHYSIOTHERAPISTS ACT 2005 - REGISTRATION OF GRADUATES OF UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME AUSTRALIA 2. Mr T.K. WALDRON to the Minister for Health: I will ask this question with a bit more enthusiasm than the member who asked the previous question! I refer to the delay in the accreditation of the first batch of physiotherapy graduates from the University of Notre Dame Australia by the Australian Physiotherapy Council. (1) Does the minister agree that this delay has resulted in those graduates being unable to work as physiotherapists unless they are given conditional or provisional classes of registration under the Physiotherapists Act? (2) Does the minister agree that until the Physiotherapists Act 2005 is proclaimed, there is no legal clause to allow graduates to attain conditional or provisional registration to work? (3) How long will it take for the legal and legislative services division of the Western Australian Department of Health to complete the regulations and for the act to be proclaimed; and, what is the minister doing to expedite the proclamation of the Physiotherapists Act 2005? Mr J.A. McGINTY replied: I thank member for Wagin for some notice of this question and for his enthusiasm for physiotherapy and manipulation! (1) - (3) The University of Notre Dame Australia applied for accreditation for its physiotherapy course in August this year. This is where the problem arose. It normally takes about six months to accredit a course of this nature. The application came in very late, given that the current batch of graduates completed their course at the end of September. Effectively, the application for accreditation of the course was made only one month prior to the students’ graduation. I do not want to make any criticisms; it just happened that way. The Physiotherapists Registration Board of Western Australia cannot recognise this qualification from the University of Notre Dame for the purposes of registration until such time as it is an accredited course. The current physiotherapy legislation makes no provision for any provisional or conditional registrations of physiotherapists. Fortunately, last year this Parliament passed the Physiotherapists Act 2005, which provides for the provisional and conditional registration of physiotherapists. That power will come into effect after the act is proclaimed. The act has not been proclaimed because the regulations have not been drafted. In recent days I signed off on the drafting instructions for the regulations to accompany that act. Now that we have discovered that there is a problem for the graduates of the University of Notre Dame, I have instructed the Department of Health to give top priority to this matter and to move with expedition to draft the regulations. It has advised me that the first draft of those regulations should be ready within a week or two. I will give this issue top priority to ensure that the regulations are promulgated as soon as possible. That will enable the act to be proclaimed, and the new board will be given the power to grant conditional or provisional registration to the UND graduates to enable them to practise. It is my hope that that process will be completed within a matter of weeks, rather than months. I thank the member for drawing this matter to my attention. It will receive urgent consideration.
Mr J.A. McGINTY : I thank the member for Perth for his ongoing interest in emergency management. I take this opportunity to congratulate four groups of people - the doctors who work in our emergency departments, the nurses who work in our emergency departments, the St John Ambulance Association, and the administration of our public hospitals - for what has been a resounding success during the 12-week trial in our emergency departments. The trial was designed to eliminate, or at least significantly reduce, the incidence of ambulance diversion and ramping at the period of peak demand in our emergency departments. The trial commenced on 10 July. It was such a success that it has been extended for a further eight weeks until 26 November. I am very pleased to report to the house that the trial resulted in zero episodes of ambulance diversion at the tertiary hospitals. That is quite a remarkable achievement. Between July and October last year - in other words, the peak winter months - the three major hospital emergency departments spent 123 hours on diversion. This year they did not spend one second on ambulance diversion, which is a great success. Several members interjected. Mr J.A. McGINTY : Why do members opposite not like the fact that things are going well? Members opposite are such a miserable mob. Even though the government has eliminated ambulance diversions from our teaching hospital emergency departments, those opposite are whingeing! Look at them all. They should join with me in celebrating a great success and pat our doctors, nurses and ambulance service on the back for the great job that they have done. Mr T. Buswell : What about the orderlies who push patients around the corridors all day? Mr J.A. McGINTY : I really feel sorry for members opposite. I hope that they stay in opposition for a long time, because that is their rightful position. The second thing that emerged from this very important trial, which was initiated by the emergency departments themselves, was a 77 per cent reduction in the frequency of ambulance ramping from 57 hours last year to 12.85 hours this year for the comparable period. Ambulance ramping is when an ambulance is at a hospital for longer than 20 minutes after it has brought in a patient. One of the mechanisms used by the doctors and nurses in the emergency departments is what is referred to as ward over-census policy, which effectively creates temporary additional capacity on the wards to enable the emergency department to move admitted patients to the wards in anticipation of a patient discharge at times of peak demand. This is a great example of our very dedicated staff working in the emergency departments coming together for the good of patients. I table the report entitled “‘No ramping/No Diversion’ Trial Final Report”. [See paper 2146]. Mr J.A. McGINTY : I will briefly refer to a further five initiatives that have been undertaken to ease the pressure on our emergency departments. Firstly, six after-hours GP clinics have been established in conjunction with the emergency departments at our hospitals. So far this year those six GP clinics have treated 27 000 people, people who would have otherwise sought medical treatment from hospital emergency departments. This has freed up the capacity of emergency departments to deal with more seriously ill and injured patients. Second, the hospital in the home program is expanding dramatically to enable people, particularly those with chronic diseases, to be treated at home so that they do not require an expensive inpatient bed. Third, we have employed extra mental health staff to work in the emergency departments. Fourth, we have dedicated beds in most of our emergency departments to cater for people with chronic mental illnesses. Finally, we have increased the number of mental health beds. When the current program is complete, there will be an extra 108 acute beds and 400 community beds. Dr J.M. Woollard interjected. Mr J.A. McGINTY : Member for Alfred Cove, the good news is that since we came to government in 2001, we have increased the number of full - time equivalent nurses to almost 2 000. Since coming to government, we have employed 1 900 extra full - time equivalent nurses. The employment of so many extra nurses has enabled us to cope so much better. PHYSIOTHERAPISTS ACT 2005 - REGISTRATION OF GRADUATES OF UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME AUSTRALIA 2. Mr T.K. WALDRON to the Minister for Health: I will ask this question with a bit more enthusiasm than the member who asked the previous question! I refer to the delay in the accreditation of the first batch of physiotherapy graduates from the University of Notre Dame Australia by the Australian Physiotherapy Council. (1) Does the minister agree that this delay has resulted in those graduates being unable to work as physiotherapists unless they are given conditional or provisional classes of registration under the Physiotherapists Act? (2) Does the minister agree that until the Physiotherapists Act 2005 is proclaimed, there is no legal clause to allow graduates to attain conditional or provisional registration to work? (3) How long will it take for the legal and legislative services division of the Western Australian Department of Health to complete the regulations and for the act to be proclaimed; and, what is the minister doing to expedite the proclamation of the Physiotherapists Act 2005? Mr J.A. McGINTY replied: I thank member for Wagin for some notice of this question and for his enthusiasm for physiotherapy and manipulation! (1) - (3) The University of Notre Dame Australia applied for accreditation for its physiotherapy course in August this year. This is where the problem arose. It normally takes about six months to accredit a course of this nature. The application came in very late, given that the current batch of graduates completed their course at the end of September. Effectively, the application for accreditation of the course was made only one month prior to the students’ graduation. I do not want to make any criticisms; it just happened that way. The Physiotherapists Registration Board of Western Australia cannot recognise this qualification from the University of Notre Dame for the purposes of registration until such time as it is an accredited course. The current physiotherapy legislation makes no provision for any provisional or conditional registrations of physiotherapists. Fortunately, last year this Parliament passed the Physiotherapists Act 2005, which provides for the provisional and conditional registration of physiotherapists. That power will come into effect after the act is proclaimed. The act has not been proclaimed because the regulations have not been drafted. In recent days I signed off on the drafting instructions for the regulations to accompany that act. Now that we have discovered that there is a problem for the graduates of the University of Notre Dame, I have instructed the Department of Health to give top priority to this matter and to move with expedition to draft the regulations. It has advised me that the first draft of those regulations should be ready within a week or two. I will give this issue top priority to ensure that the regulations are promulgated as soon as possible. That will enable the act to be proclaimed, and the new board will be given the power to grant conditional or provisional registration to the UND graduates to enable them to practise. It is my hope that that process will be completed within a matter of weeks, rather than months. I thank the member for drawing this matter to my attention. It will receive urgent consideration.
The trial commenced on 10 July. It was such a success that it has been extended for a further eight weeks until 26 November. I am very pleased to report to the house that the trial resulted in zero episodes of ambulance diversion at the tertiary hospitals. That is quite a remarkable achievement. Between July and October last year - in other words, the peak winter months - the three major hospital emergency departments spent 123 hours on diversion. This year they did not spend one second on ambulance diversion, which is a great success. Several members interjected. Mr J.A. McGINTY : Why do members opposite not like the fact that things are going well? Members opposite are such a miserable mob. Even though the government has eliminated ambulance diversions from our teaching hospital emergency departments, those opposite are whingeing! Look at them all. They should join with me in celebrating a great success and pat our doctors, nurses and ambulance service on the back for the great job that they have done. Mr T. Buswell : What about the orderlies who push patients around the corridors all day? Mr J.A. McGINTY : I really feel sorry for members opposite. I hope that they stay in opposition for a long time, because that is their rightful position. The second thing that emerged from this very important trial, which was initiated by the emergency departments themselves, was a 77 per cent reduction in the frequency of ambulance ramping from 57 hours last year to 12.85 hours this year for the comparable period. Ambulance ramping is when an ambulance is at a hospital for longer than 20 minutes after it has brought in a patient. One of the mechanisms used by the doctors and nurses in the emergency departments is what is referred to as ward over-census policy, which effectively creates temporary additional capacity on the wards to enable the emergency department to move admitted patients to the wards in anticipation of a patient discharge at times of peak demand. This is a great example of our very dedicated staff working in the emergency departments coming together for the good of patients. I table the report entitled “‘No ramping/No Diversion’ Trial Final Report”. [See paper 2146]. Mr J.A. McGINTY : I will briefly refer to a further five initiatives that have been undertaken to ease the pressure on our emergency departments. Firstly, six after-hours GP clinics have been established in conjunction with the emergency departments at our hospitals. So far this year those six GP clinics have treated 27 000 people, people who would have otherwise sought medical treatment from hospital emergency departments. This has freed up the capacity of emergency departments to deal with more seriously ill and injured patients. Second, the hospital in the home program is expanding dramatically to enable people, particularly those with chronic diseases, to be treated at home so that they do not require an expensive inpatient bed. Third, we have employed extra mental health staff to work in the emergency departments. Fourth, we have dedicated beds in most of our emergency departments to cater for people with chronic mental illnesses. Finally, we have increased the number of mental health beds. When the current program is complete, there will be an extra 108 acute beds and 400 community beds. Dr J.M. Woollard interjected. Mr J.A. McGINTY : Member for Alfred Cove, the good news is that since we came to government in 2001, we have increased the number of full - time equivalent nurses to almost 2 000. Since coming to government, we have employed 1 900 extra full - time equivalent nurses. The employment of so many extra nurses has enabled us to cope so much better. PHYSIOTHERAPISTS ACT 2005 - REGISTRATION OF GRADUATES OF UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME AUSTRALIA 2. Mr T.K. WALDRON to the Minister for Health: I will ask this question with a bit more enthusiasm than the member who asked the previous question! I refer to the delay in the accreditation of the first batch of physiotherapy graduates from the University of Notre Dame Australia by the Australian Physiotherapy Council. (1) Does the minister agree that this delay has resulted in those graduates being unable to work as physiotherapists unless they are given conditional or provisional classes of registration under the Physiotherapists Act? (2) Does the minister agree that until the Physiotherapists Act 2005 is proclaimed, there is no legal clause to allow graduates to attain conditional or provisional registration to work? (3) How long will it take for the legal and legislative services division of the Western Australian Department of Health to complete the regulations and for the act to be proclaimed; and, what is the minister doing to expedite the proclamation of the Physiotherapists Act 2005? Mr J.A. McGINTY replied: I thank member for Wagin for some notice of this question and for his enthusiasm for physiotherapy and manipulation! (1) - (3) The University of Notre Dame Australia applied for accreditation for its physiotherapy course in August this year. This is where the problem arose. It normally takes about six months to accredit a course of this nature. The application came in very late, given that the current batch of graduates completed their course at the end of September. Effectively, the application for accreditation of the course was made only one month prior to the students’ graduation. I do not want to make any criticisms; it just happened that way. The Physiotherapists Registration Board of Western Australia cannot recognise this qualification from the University of Notre Dame for the purposes of registration until such time as it is an accredited course. The current physiotherapy legislation makes no provision for any provisional or conditional registrations of physiotherapists. Fortunately, last year this Parliament passed the Physiotherapists Act 2005, which provides for the provisional and conditional registration of physiotherapists. That power will come into effect after the act is proclaimed. The act has not been proclaimed because the regulations have not been drafted. In recent days I signed off on the drafting instructions for the regulations to accompany that act. Now that we have discovered that there is a problem for the graduates of the University of Notre Dame, I have instructed the Department of Health to give top priority to this matter and to move with expedition to draft the regulations. It has advised me that the first draft of those regulations should be ready within a week or two. I will give this issue top priority to ensure that the regulations are promulgated as soon as possible. That will enable the act to be proclaimed, and the new board will be given the power to grant conditional or provisional registration to the UND graduates to enable them to practise. It is my hope that that process will be completed within a matter of weeks, rather than months. I thank the member for drawing this matter to my attention. It will receive urgent consideration.
Several members interjected. Mr J.A. McGINTY : Why do members opposite not like the fact that things are going well? Members opposite are such a miserable mob. Even though the government has eliminated ambulance diversions from our teaching hospital emergency departments, those opposite are whingeing! Look at them all. They should join with me in celebrating a great success and pat our doctors, nurses and ambulance service on the back for the great job that they have done. Mr T. Buswell : What about the orderlies who push patients around the corridors all day? Mr J.A. McGINTY : I really feel sorry for members opposite. I hope that they stay in opposition for a long time, because that is their rightful position. The second thing that emerged from this very important trial, which was initiated by the emergency departments themselves, was a 77 per cent reduction in the frequency of ambulance ramping from 57 hours last year to 12.85 hours this year for the comparable period. Ambulance ramping is when an ambulance is at a hospital for longer than 20 minutes after it has brought in a patient. One of the mechanisms used by the doctors and nurses in the emergency departments is what is referred to as ward over-census policy, which effectively creates temporary additional capacity on the wards to enable the emergency department to move admitted patients to the wards in anticipation of a patient discharge at times of peak demand. This is a great example of our very dedicated staff working in the emergency departments coming together for the good of patients. I table the report entitled “‘No ramping/No Diversion’ Trial Final Report”. [See paper 2146]. Mr J.A. McGINTY : I will briefly refer to a further five initiatives that have been undertaken to ease the pressure on our emergency departments. Firstly, six after-hours GP clinics have been established in conjunction with the emergency departments at our hospitals. So far this year those six GP clinics have treated 27 000 people, people who would have otherwise sought medical treatment from hospital emergency departments. This has freed up the capacity of emergency departments to deal with more seriously ill and injured patients. Second, the hospital in the home program is expanding dramatically to enable people, particularly those with chronic diseases, to be treated at home so that they do not require an expensive inpatient bed. Third, we have employed extra mental health staff to work in the emergency departments. Fourth, we have dedicated beds in most of our emergency departments to cater for people with chronic mental illnesses. Finally, we have increased the number of mental health beds. When the current program is complete, there will be an extra 108 acute beds and 400 community beds. Dr J.M. Woollard interjected. Mr J.A. McGINTY : Member for Alfred Cove, the good news is that since we came to government in 2001, we have increased the number of full - time equivalent nurses to almost 2 000. Since coming to government, we have employed 1 900 extra full - time equivalent nurses. The employment of so many extra nurses has enabled us to cope so much better. PHYSIOTHERAPISTS ACT 2005 - REGISTRATION OF GRADUATES OF UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME AUSTRALIA 2. Mr T.K. WALDRON to the Minister for Health: I will ask this question with a bit more enthusiasm than the member who asked the previous question! I refer to the delay in the accreditation of the first batch of physiotherapy graduates from the University of Notre Dame Australia by the Australian Physiotherapy Council. (1) Does the minister agree that this delay has resulted in those graduates being unable to work as physiotherapists unless they are given conditional or provisional classes of registration under the Physiotherapists Act? (2) Does the minister agree that until the Physiotherapists Act 2005 is proclaimed, there is no legal clause to allow graduates to attain conditional or provisional registration to work? (3) How long will it take for the legal and legislative services division of the Western Australian Department of Health to complete the regulations and for the act to be proclaimed; and, what is the minister doing to expedite the proclamation of the Physiotherapists Act 2005? Mr J.A. McGINTY replied: I thank member for Wagin for some notice of this question and for his enthusiasm for physiotherapy and manipulation! (1) - (3) The University of Notre Dame Australia applied for accreditation for its physiotherapy course in August this year. This is where the problem arose. It normally takes about six months to accredit a course of this nature. The application came in very late, given that the current batch of graduates completed their course at the end of September. Effectively, the application for accreditation of the course was made only one month prior to the students’ graduation. I do not want to make any criticisms; it just happened that way. The Physiotherapists Registration Board of Western Australia cannot recognise this qualification from the University of Notre Dame for the purposes of registration until such time as it is an accredited course. The current physiotherapy legislation makes no provision for any provisional or conditional registrations of physiotherapists. Fortunately, last year this Parliament passed the Physiotherapists Act 2005, which provides for the provisional and conditional registration of physiotherapists. That power will come into effect after the act is proclaimed. The act has not been proclaimed because the regulations have not been drafted. In recent days I signed off on the drafting instructions for the regulations to accompany that act. Now that we have discovered that there is a problem for the graduates of the University of Notre Dame, I have instructed the Department of Health to give top priority to this matter and to move with expedition to draft the regulations. It has advised me that the first draft of those regulations should be ready within a week or two. I will give this issue top priority to ensure that the regulations are promulgated as soon as possible. That will enable the act to be proclaimed, and the new board will be given the power to grant conditional or provisional registration to the UND graduates to enable them to practise. It is my hope that that process will be completed within a matter of weeks, rather than months. I thank the member for drawing this matter to my attention. It will receive urgent consideration.
Mr J.A. McGINTY : Why do members opposite not like the fact that things are going well? Members opposite are such a miserable mob. Even though the government has eliminated ambulance diversions from our teaching hospital emergency departments, those opposite are whingeing! Look at them all. They should join with me in celebrating a great success and pat our doctors, nurses and ambulance service on the back for the great job that they have done. Mr T. Buswell : What about the orderlies who push patients around the corridors all day? Mr J.A. McGINTY : I really feel sorry for members opposite. I hope that they stay in opposition for a long time, because that is their rightful position. The second thing that emerged from this very important trial, which was initiated by the emergency departments themselves, was a 77 per cent reduction in the frequency of ambulance ramping from 57 hours last year to 12.85 hours this year for the comparable period. Ambulance ramping is when an ambulance is at a hospital for longer than 20 minutes after it has brought in a patient. One of the mechanisms used by the doctors and nurses in the emergency departments is what is referred to as ward over-census policy, which effectively creates temporary additional capacity on the wards to enable the emergency department to move admitted patients to the wards in anticipation of a patient discharge at times of peak demand. This is a great example of our very dedicated staff working in the emergency departments coming together for the good of patients. I table the report entitled “‘No ramping/No Diversion’ Trial Final Report”. [See paper 2146]. Mr J.A. McGINTY : I will briefly refer to a further five initiatives that have been undertaken to ease the pressure on our emergency departments. Firstly, six after-hours GP clinics have been established in conjunction with the emergency departments at our hospitals. So far this year those six GP clinics have treated 27 000 people, people who would have otherwise sought medical treatment from hospital emergency departments. This has freed up the capacity of emergency departments to deal with more seriously ill and injured patients. Second, the hospital in the home program is expanding dramatically to enable people, particularly those with chronic diseases, to be treated at home so that they do not require an expensive inpatient bed. Third, we have employed extra mental health staff to work in the emergency departments. Fourth, we have dedicated beds in most of our emergency departments to cater for people with chronic mental illnesses. Finally, we have increased the number of mental health beds. When the current program is complete, there will be an extra 108 acute beds and 400 community beds. Dr J.M. Woollard interjected. Mr J.A. McGINTY : Member for Alfred Cove, the good news is that since we came to government in 2001, we have increased the number of full - time equivalent nurses to almost 2 000. Since coming to government, we have employed 1 900 extra full - time equivalent nurses. The employment of so many extra nurses has enabled us to cope so much better. PHYSIOTHERAPISTS ACT 2005 - REGISTRATION OF GRADUATES OF UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME AUSTRALIA 2. Mr T.K. WALDRON to the Minister for Health: I will ask this question with a bit more enthusiasm than the member who asked the previous question! I refer to the delay in the accreditation of the first batch of physiotherapy graduates from the University of Notre Dame Australia by the Australian Physiotherapy Council. (1) Does the minister agree that this delay has resulted in those graduates being unable to work as physiotherapists unless they are given conditional or provisional classes of registration under the Physiotherapists Act? (2) Does the minister agree that until the Physiotherapists Act 2005 is proclaimed, there is no legal clause to allow graduates to attain conditional or provisional registration to work? (3) How long will it take for the legal and legislative services division of the Western Australian Department of Health to complete the regulations and for the act to be proclaimed; and, what is the minister doing to expedite the proclamation of the Physiotherapists Act 2005? Mr J.A. McGINTY replied: I thank member for Wagin for some notice of this question and for his enthusiasm for physiotherapy and manipulation! (1) - (3) The University of Notre Dame Australia applied for accreditation for its physiotherapy course in August this year. This is where the problem arose. It normally takes about six months to accredit a course of this nature. The application came in very late, given that the current batch of graduates completed their course at the end of September. Effectively, the application for accreditation of the course was made only one month prior to the students’ graduation. I do not want to make any criticisms; it just happened that way. The Physiotherapists Registration Board of Western Australia cannot recognise this qualification from the University of Notre Dame for the purposes of registration until such time as it is an accredited course. The current physiotherapy legislation makes no provision for any provisional or conditional registrations of physiotherapists. Fortunately, last year this Parliament passed the Physiotherapists Act 2005, which provides for the provisional and conditional registration of physiotherapists. That power will come into effect after the act is proclaimed. The act has not been proclaimed because the regulations have not been drafted. In recent days I signed off on the drafting instructions for the regulations to accompany that act. Now that we have discovered that there is a problem for the graduates of the University of Notre Dame, I have instructed the Department of Health to give top priority to this matter and to move with expedition to draft the regulations. It has advised me that the first draft of those regulations should be ready within a week or two. I will give this issue top priority to ensure that the regulations are promulgated as soon as possible. That will enable the act to be proclaimed, and the new board will be given the power to grant conditional or provisional registration to the UND graduates to enable them to practise. It is my hope that that process will be completed within a matter of weeks, rather than months. I thank the member for drawing this matter to my attention. It will receive urgent consideration.
Mr T. Buswell : What about the orderlies who push patients around the corridors all day? Mr J.A. McGINTY : I really feel sorry for members opposite. I hope that they stay in opposition for a long time, because that is their rightful position. The second thing that emerged from this very important trial, which was initiated by the emergency departments themselves, was a 77 per cent reduction in the frequency of ambulance ramping from 57 hours last year to 12.85 hours this year for the comparable period. Ambulance ramping is when an ambulance is at a hospital for longer than 20 minutes after it has brought in a patient. One of the mechanisms used by the doctors and nurses in the emergency departments is what is referred to as ward over-census policy, which effectively creates temporary additional capacity on the wards to enable the emergency department to move admitted patients to the wards in anticipation of a patient discharge at times of peak demand. This is a great example of our very dedicated staff working in the emergency departments coming together for the good of patients. I table the report entitled “‘No ramping/No Diversion’ Trial Final Report”. [See paper 2146]. Mr J.A. McGINTY : I will briefly refer to a further five initiatives that have been undertaken to ease the pressure on our emergency departments. Firstly, six after-hours GP clinics have been established in conjunction with the emergency departments at our hospitals. So far this year those six GP clinics have treated 27 000 people, people who would have otherwise sought medical treatment from hospital emergency departments. This has freed up the capacity of emergency departments to deal with more seriously ill and injured patients. Second, the hospital in the home program is expanding dramatically to enable people, particularly those with chronic diseases, to be treated at home so that they do not require an expensive inpatient bed. Third, we have employed extra mental health staff to work in the emergency departments. Fourth, we have dedicated beds in most of our emergency departments to cater for people with chronic mental illnesses. Finally, we have increased the number of mental health beds. When the current program is complete, there will be an extra 108 acute beds and 400 community beds. Dr J.M. Woollard interjected. Mr J.A. McGINTY : Member for Alfred Cove, the good news is that since we came to government in 2001, we have increased the number of full - time equivalent nurses to almost 2 000. Since coming to government, we have employed 1 900 extra full - time equivalent nurses. The employment of so many extra nurses has enabled us to cope so much better. PHYSIOTHERAPISTS ACT 2005 - REGISTRATION OF GRADUATES OF UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME AUSTRALIA 2. Mr T.K. WALDRON to the Minister for Health: I will ask this question with a bit more enthusiasm than the member who asked the previous question! I refer to the delay in the accreditation of the first batch of physiotherapy graduates from the University of Notre Dame Australia by the Australian Physiotherapy Council. (1) Does the minister agree that this delay has resulted in those graduates being unable to work as physiotherapists unless they are given conditional or provisional classes of registration under the Physiotherapists Act? (2) Does the minister agree that until the Physiotherapists Act 2005 is proclaimed, there is no legal clause to allow graduates to attain conditional or provisional registration to work? (3) How long will it take for the legal and legislative services division of the Western Australian Department of Health to complete the regulations and for the act to be proclaimed; and, what is the minister doing to expedite the proclamation of the Physiotherapists Act 2005? Mr J.A. McGINTY replied: I thank member for Wagin for some notice of this question and for his enthusiasm for physiotherapy and manipulation! (1) - (3) The University of Notre Dame Australia applied for accreditation for its physiotherapy course in August this year. This is where the problem arose. It normally takes about six months to accredit a course of this nature. The application came in very late, given that the current batch of graduates completed their course at the end of September. Effectively, the application for accreditation of the course was made only one month prior to the students’ graduation. I do not want to make any criticisms; it just happened that way. The Physiotherapists Registration Board of Western Australia cannot recognise this qualification from the University of Notre Dame for the purposes of registration until such time as it is an accredited course. The current physiotherapy legislation makes no provision for any provisional or conditional registrations of physiotherapists. Fortunately, last year this Parliament passed the Physiotherapists Act 2005, which provides for the provisional and conditional registration of physiotherapists. That power will come into effect after the act is proclaimed. The act has not been proclaimed because the regulations have not been drafted. In recent days I signed off on the drafting instructions for the regulations to accompany that act. Now that we have discovered that there is a problem for the graduates of the University of Notre Dame, I have instructed the Department of Health to give top priority to this matter and to move with expedition to draft the regulations. It has advised me that the first draft of those regulations should be ready within a week or two. I will give this issue top priority to ensure that the regulations are promulgated as soon as possible. That will enable the act to be proclaimed, and the new board will be given the power to grant conditional or provisional registration to the UND graduates to enable them to practise. It is my hope that that process will be completed within a matter of weeks, rather than months. I thank the member for drawing this matter to my attention. It will receive urgent consideration.
Mr J.A. McGINTY : I really feel sorry for members opposite. I hope that they stay in opposition for a long time, because that is their rightful position. The second thing that emerged from this very important trial, which was initiated by the emergency departments themselves, was a 77 per cent reduction in the frequency of ambulance ramping from 57 hours last year to 12.85 hours this year for the comparable period. Ambulance ramping is when an ambulance is at a hospital for longer than 20 minutes after it has brought in a patient. One of the mechanisms used by the doctors and nurses in the emergency departments is what is referred to as ward over-census policy, which effectively creates temporary additional capacity on the wards to enable the emergency department to move admitted patients to the wards in anticipation of a patient discharge at times of peak demand. This is a great example of our very dedicated staff working in the emergency departments coming together for the good of patients. I table the report entitled “‘No ramping/No Diversion’ Trial Final Report”. [See paper 2146]. Mr J.A. McGINTY : I will briefly refer to a further five initiatives that have been undertaken to ease the pressure on our emergency departments. Firstly, six after-hours GP clinics have been established in conjunction with the emergency departments at our hospitals. So far this year those six GP clinics have treated 27 000 people, people who would have otherwise sought medical treatment from hospital emergency departments. This has freed up the capacity of emergency departments to deal with more seriously ill and injured patients. Second, the hospital in the home program is expanding dramatically to enable people, particularly those with chronic diseases, to be treated at home so that they do not require an expensive inpatient bed. Third, we have employed extra mental health staff to work in the emergency departments. Fourth, we have dedicated beds in most of our emergency departments to cater for people with chronic mental illnesses. Finally, we have increased the number of mental health beds. When the current program is complete, there will be an extra 108 acute beds and 400 community beds. Dr J.M. Woollard interjected. Mr J.A. McGINTY : Member for Alfred Cove, the good news is that since we came to government in 2001, we have increased the number of full - time equivalent nurses to almost 2 000. Since coming to government, we have employed 1 900 extra full - time equivalent nurses. The employment of so many extra nurses has enabled us to cope so much better. PHYSIOTHERAPISTS ACT 2005 - REGISTRATION OF GRADUATES OF UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME AUSTRALIA 2. Mr T.K. WALDRON to the Minister for Health: I will ask this question with a bit more enthusiasm than the member who asked the previous question! I refer to the delay in the accreditation of the first batch of physiotherapy graduates from the University of Notre Dame Australia by the Australian Physiotherapy Council. (1) Does the minister agree that this delay has resulted in those graduates being unable to work as physiotherapists unless they are given conditional or provisional classes of registration under the Physiotherapists Act? (2) Does the minister agree that until the Physiotherapists Act 2005 is proclaimed, there is no legal clause to allow graduates to attain conditional or provisional registration to work? (3) How long will it take for the legal and legislative services division of the Western Australian Department of Health to complete the regulations and for the act to be proclaimed; and, what is the minister doing to expedite the proclamation of the Physiotherapists Act 2005? Mr J.A. McGINTY replied: I thank member for Wagin for some notice of this question and for his enthusiasm for physiotherapy and manipulation! (1) - (3) The University of Notre Dame Australia applied for accreditation for its physiotherapy course in August this year. This is where the problem arose. It normally takes about six months to accredit a course of this nature. The application came in very late, given that the current batch of graduates completed their course at the end of September. Effectively, the application for accreditation of the course was made only one month prior to the students’ graduation. I do not want to make any criticisms; it just happened that way. The Physiotherapists Registration Board of Western Australia cannot recognise this qualification from the University of Notre Dame for the purposes of registration until such time as it is an accredited course. The current physiotherapy legislation makes no provision for any provisional or conditional registrations of physiotherapists. Fortunately, last year this Parliament passed the Physiotherapists Act 2005, which provides for the provisional and conditional registration of physiotherapists. That power will come into effect after the act is proclaimed. The act has not been proclaimed because the regulations have not been drafted. In recent days I signed off on the drafting instructions for the regulations to accompany that act. Now that we have discovered that there is a problem for the graduates of the University of Notre Dame, I have instructed the Department of Health to give top priority to this matter and to move with expedition to draft the regulations. It has advised me that the first draft of those regulations should be ready within a week or two. I will give this issue top priority to ensure that the regulations are promulgated as soon as possible. That will enable the act to be proclaimed, and the new board will be given the power to grant conditional or provisional registration to the UND graduates to enable them to practise. It is my hope that that process will be completed within a matter of weeks, rather than months. I thank the member for drawing this matter to my attention. It will receive urgent consideration.
The second thing that emerged from this very important trial, which was initiated by the emergency departments themselves, was a 77 per cent reduction in the frequency of ambulance ramping from 57 hours last year to 12.85 hours this year for the comparable period. Ambulance ramping is when an ambulance is at a hospital for longer than 20 minutes after it has brought in a patient. One of the mechanisms used by the doctors and nurses in the emergency departments is what is referred to as ward over-census policy, which effectively creates temporary additional capacity on the wards to enable the emergency department to move admitted patients to the wards in anticipation of a patient discharge at times of peak demand. This is a great example of our very dedicated staff working in the emergency departments coming together for the good of patients. I table the report entitled “‘No ramping/No Diversion’ Trial Final Report”. [See paper 2146]. Mr J.A. McGINTY : I will briefly refer to a further five initiatives that have been undertaken to ease the pressure on our emergency departments. Firstly, six after-hours GP clinics have been established in conjunction with the emergency departments at our hospitals. So far this year those six GP clinics have treated 27 000 people, people who would have otherwise sought medical treatment from hospital emergency departments. This has freed up the capacity of emergency departments to deal with more seriously ill and injured patients. Second, the hospital in the home program is expanding dramatically to enable people, particularly those with chronic diseases, to be treated at home so that they do not require an expensive inpatient bed. Third, we have employed extra mental health staff to work in the emergency departments. Fourth, we have dedicated beds in most of our emergency departments to cater for people with chronic mental illnesses. Finally, we have increased the number of mental health beds. When the current program is complete, there will be an extra 108 acute beds and 400 community beds. Dr J.M. Woollard interjected. Mr J.A. McGINTY : Member for Alfred Cove, the good news is that since we came to government in 2001, we have increased the number of full - time equivalent nurses to almost 2 000. Since coming to government, we have employed 1 900 extra full - time equivalent nurses. The employment of so many extra nurses has enabled us to cope so much better. PHYSIOTHERAPISTS ACT 2005 - REGISTRATION OF GRADUATES OF UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME AUSTRALIA 2. Mr T.K. WALDRON to the Minister for Health: I will ask this question with a bit more enthusiasm than the member who asked the previous question! I refer to the delay in the accreditation of the first batch of physiotherapy graduates from the University of Notre Dame Australia by the Australian Physiotherapy Council. (1) Does the minister agree that this delay has resulted in those graduates being unable to work as physiotherapists unless they are given conditional or provisional classes of registration under the Physiotherapists Act? (2) Does the minister agree that until the Physiotherapists Act 2005 is proclaimed, there is no legal clause to allow graduates to attain conditional or provisional registration to work? (3) How long will it take for the legal and legislative services division of the Western Australian Department of Health to complete the regulations and for the act to be proclaimed; and, what is the minister doing to expedite the proclamation of the Physiotherapists Act 2005? Mr J.A. McGINTY replied: I thank member for Wagin for some notice of this question and for his enthusiasm for physiotherapy and manipulation! (1) - (3) The University of Notre Dame Australia applied for accreditation for its physiotherapy course in August this year. This is where the problem arose. It normally takes about six months to accredit a course of this nature. The application came in very late, given that the current batch of graduates completed their course at the end of September. Effectively, the application for accreditation of the course was made only one month prior to the students’ graduation. I do not want to make any criticisms; it just happened that way. The Physiotherapists Registration Board of Western Australia cannot recognise this qualification from the University of Notre Dame for the purposes of registration until such time as it is an accredited course. The current physiotherapy legislation makes no provision for any provisional or conditional registrations of physiotherapists. Fortunately, last year this Parliament passed the Physiotherapists Act 2005, which provides for the provisional and conditional registration of physiotherapists. That power will come into effect after the act is proclaimed. The act has not been proclaimed because the regulations have not been drafted. In recent days I signed off on the drafting instructions for the regulations to accompany that act. Now that we have discovered that there is a problem for the graduates of the University of Notre Dame, I have instructed the Department of Health to give top priority to this matter and to move with expedition to draft the regulations. It has advised me that the first draft of those regulations should be ready within a week or two. I will give this issue top priority to ensure that the regulations are promulgated as soon as possible. That will enable the act to be proclaimed, and the new board will be given the power to grant conditional or provisional registration to the UND graduates to enable them to practise. It is my hope that that process will be completed within a matter of weeks, rather than months. I thank the member for drawing this matter to my attention. It will receive urgent consideration.
[See paper 2146]. Mr J.A. McGINTY : I will briefly refer to a further five initiatives that have been undertaken to ease the pressure on our emergency departments. Firstly, six after-hours GP clinics have been established in conjunction with the emergency departments at our hospitals. So far this year those six GP clinics have treated 27 000 people, people who would have otherwise sought medical treatment from hospital emergency departments. This has freed up the capacity of emergency departments to deal with more seriously ill and injured patients. Second, the hospital in the home program is expanding dramatically to enable people, particularly those with chronic diseases, to be treated at home so that they do not require an expensive inpatient bed. Third, we have employed extra mental health staff to work in the emergency departments. Fourth, we have dedicated beds in most of our emergency departments to cater for people with chronic mental illnesses. Finally, we have increased the number of mental health beds. When the current program is complete, there will be an extra 108 acute beds and 400 community beds. Dr J.M. Woollard interjected. Mr J.A. McGINTY : Member for Alfred Cove, the good news is that since we came to government in 2001, we have increased the number of full - time equivalent nurses to almost 2 000. Since coming to government, we have employed 1 900 extra full - time equivalent nurses. The employment of so many extra nurses has enabled us to cope so much better. PHYSIOTHERAPISTS ACT 2005 - REGISTRATION OF GRADUATES OF UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME AUSTRALIA 2. Mr T.K. WALDRON to the Minister for Health: I will ask this question with a bit more enthusiasm than the member who asked the previous question! I refer to the delay in the accreditation of the first batch of physiotherapy graduates from the University of Notre Dame Australia by the Australian Physiotherapy Council. (1) Does the minister agree that this delay has resulted in those graduates being unable to work as physiotherapists unless they are given conditional or provisional classes of registration under the Physiotherapists Act? (2) Does the minister agree that until the Physiotherapists Act 2005 is proclaimed, there is no legal clause to allow graduates to attain conditional or provisional registration to work? (3) How long will it take for the legal and legislative services division of the Western Australian Department of Health to complete the regulations and for the act to be proclaimed; and, what is the minister doing to expedite the proclamation of the Physiotherapists Act 2005? Mr J.A. McGINTY replied: I thank member for Wagin for some notice of this question and for his enthusiasm for physiotherapy and manipulation! (1) - (3) The University of Notre Dame Australia applied for accreditation for its physiotherapy course in August this year. This is where the problem arose. It normally takes about six months to accredit a course of this nature. The application came in very late, given that the current batch of graduates completed their course at the end of September. Effectively, the application for accreditation of the course was made only one month prior to the students’ graduation. I do not want to make any criticisms; it just happened that way. The Physiotherapists Registration Board of Western Australia cannot recognise this qualification from the University of Notre Dame for the purposes of registration until such time as it is an accredited course. The current physiotherapy legislation makes no provision for any provisional or conditional registrations of physiotherapists. Fortunately, last year this Parliament passed the Physiotherapists Act 2005, which provides for the provisional and conditional registration of physiotherapists. That power will come into effect after the act is proclaimed. The act has not been proclaimed because the regulations have not been drafted. In recent days I signed off on the drafting instructions for the regulations to accompany that act. Now that we have discovered that there is a problem for the graduates of the University of Notre Dame, I have instructed the Department of Health to give top priority to this matter and to move with expedition to draft the regulations. It has advised me that the first draft of those regulations should be ready within a week or two. I will give this issue top priority to ensure that the regulations are promulgated as soon as possible. That will enable the act to be proclaimed, and the new board will be given the power to grant conditional or provisional registration to the UND graduates to enable them to practise. It is my hope that that process will be completed within a matter of weeks, rather than months. I thank the member for drawing this matter to my attention. It will receive urgent consideration.
Mr J.A. McGINTY : I will briefly refer to a further five initiatives that have been undertaken to ease the pressure on our emergency departments. Firstly, six after-hours GP clinics have been established in conjunction with the emergency departments at our hospitals. So far this year those six GP clinics have treated 27 000 people, people who would have otherwise sought medical treatment from hospital emergency departments. This has freed up the capacity of emergency departments to deal with more seriously ill and injured patients. Second, the hospital in the home program is expanding dramatically to enable people, particularly those with chronic diseases, to be treated at home so that they do not require an expensive inpatient bed. Third, we have employed extra mental health staff to work in the emergency departments. Fourth, we have dedicated beds in most of our emergency departments to cater for people with chronic mental illnesses. Finally, we have increased the number of mental health beds. When the current program is complete, there will be an extra 108 acute beds and 400 community beds. Dr J.M. Woollard interjected. Mr J.A. McGINTY : Member for Alfred Cove, the good news is that since we came to government in 2001, we have increased the number of full - time equivalent nurses to almost 2 000. Since coming to government, we have employed 1 900 extra full - time equivalent nurses. The employment of so many extra nurses has enabled us to cope so much better. PHYSIOTHERAPISTS ACT 2005 - REGISTRATION OF GRADUATES OF UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME AUSTRALIA 2. Mr T.K. WALDRON to the Minister for Health: I will ask this question with a bit more enthusiasm than the member who asked the previous question! I refer to the delay in the accreditation of the first batch of physiotherapy graduates from the University of Notre Dame Australia by the Australian Physiotherapy Council. (1) Does the minister agree that this delay has resulted in those graduates being unable to work as physiotherapists unless they are given conditional or provisional classes of registration under the Physiotherapists Act? (2) Does the minister agree that until the Physiotherapists Act 2005 is proclaimed, there is no legal clause to allow graduates to attain conditional or provisional registration to work? (3) How long will it take for the legal and legislative services division of the Western Australian Department of Health to complete the regulations and for the act to be proclaimed; and, what is the minister doing to expedite the proclamation of the Physiotherapists Act 2005? Mr J.A. McGINTY replied: I thank member for Wagin for some notice of this question and for his enthusiasm for physiotherapy and manipulation! (1) - (3) The University of Notre Dame Australia applied for accreditation for its physiotherapy course in August this year. This is where the problem arose. It normally takes about six months to accredit a course of this nature. The application came in very late, given that the current batch of graduates completed their course at the end of September. Effectively, the application for accreditation of the course was made only one month prior to the students’ graduation. I do not want to make any criticisms; it just happened that way. The Physiotherapists Registration Board of Western Australia cannot recognise this qualification from the University of Notre Dame for the purposes of registration until such time as it is an accredited course. The current physiotherapy legislation makes no provision for any provisional or conditional registrations of physiotherapists. Fortunately, last year this Parliament passed the Physiotherapists Act 2005, which provides for the provisional and conditional registration of physiotherapists. That power will come into effect after the act is proclaimed. The act has not been proclaimed because the regulations have not been drafted. In recent days I signed off on the drafting instructions for the regulations to accompany that act. Now that we have discovered that there is a problem for the graduates of the University of Notre Dame, I have instructed the Department of Health to give top priority to this matter and to move with expedition to draft the regulations. It has advised me that the first draft of those regulations should be ready within a week or two. I will give this issue top priority to ensure that the regulations are promulgated as soon as possible. That will enable the act to be proclaimed, and the new board will be given the power to grant conditional or provisional registration to the UND graduates to enable them to practise. It is my hope that that process will be completed within a matter of weeks, rather than months. I thank the member for drawing this matter to my attention. It will receive urgent consideration.
Dr J.M. Woollard interjected. Mr J.A. McGINTY : Member for Alfred Cove, the good news is that since we came to government in 2001, we have increased the number of full - time equivalent nurses to almost 2 000. Since coming to government, we have employed 1 900 extra full - time equivalent nurses. The employment of so many extra nurses has enabled us to cope so much better. PHYSIOTHERAPISTS ACT 2005 - REGISTRATION OF GRADUATES OF UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME AUSTRALIA 2. Mr T.K. WALDRON to the Minister for Health: I will ask this question with a bit more enthusiasm than the member who asked the previous question! I refer to the delay in the accreditation of the first batch of physiotherapy graduates from the University of Notre Dame Australia by the Australian Physiotherapy Council. (1) Does the minister agree that this delay has resulted in those graduates being unable to work as physiotherapists unless they are given conditional or provisional classes of registration under the Physiotherapists Act? (2) Does the minister agree that until the Physiotherapists Act 2005 is proclaimed, there is no legal clause to allow graduates to attain conditional or provisional registration to work? (3) How long will it take for the legal and legislative services division of the Western Australian Department of Health to complete the regulations and for the act to be proclaimed; and, what is the minister doing to expedite the proclamation of the Physiotherapists Act 2005? Mr J.A. McGINTY replied: I thank member for Wagin for some notice of this question and for his enthusiasm for physiotherapy and manipulation! (1) - (3) The University of Notre Dame Australia applied for accreditation for its physiotherapy course in August this year. This is where the problem arose. It normally takes about six months to accredit a course of this nature. The application came in very late, given that the current batch of graduates completed their course at the end of September. Effectively, the application for accreditation of the course was made only one month prior to the students’ graduation. I do not want to make any criticisms; it just happened that way. The Physiotherapists Registration Board of Western Australia cannot recognise this qualification from the University of Notre Dame for the purposes of registration until such time as it is an accredited course. The current physiotherapy legislation makes no provision for any provisional or conditional registrations of physiotherapists. Fortunately, last year this Parliament passed the Physiotherapists Act 2005, which provides for the provisional and conditional registration of physiotherapists. That power will come into effect after the act is proclaimed. The act has not been proclaimed because the regulations have not been drafted. In recent days I signed off on the drafting instructions for the regulations to accompany that act. Now that we have discovered that there is a problem for the graduates of the University of Notre Dame, I have instructed the Department of Health to give top priority to this matter and to move with expedition to draft the regulations. It has advised me that the first draft of those regulations should be ready within a week or two. I will give this issue top priority to ensure that the regulations are promulgated as soon as possible. That will enable the act to be proclaimed, and the new board will be given the power to grant conditional or provisional registration to the UND graduates to enable them to practise. It is my hope that that process will be completed within a matter of weeks, rather than months. I thank the member for drawing this matter to my attention. It will receive urgent consideration.
Mr J.A. McGINTY : Member for Alfred Cove, the good news is that since we came to government in 2001, we have increased the number of full - time equivalent nurses to almost 2 000. Since coming to government, we have employed 1 900 extra full - time equivalent nurses. The employment of so many extra nurses has enabled us to cope so much better. PHYSIOTHERAPISTS ACT 2005 - REGISTRATION OF GRADUATES OF UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME AUSTRALIA 2. Mr T.K. WALDRON to the Minister for Health: I will ask this question with a bit more enthusiasm than the member who asked the previous question! I refer to the delay in the accreditation of the first batch of physiotherapy graduates from the University of Notre Dame Australia by the Australian Physiotherapy Council. (1) Does the minister agree that this delay has resulted in those graduates being unable to work as physiotherapists unless they are given conditional or provisional classes of registration under the Physiotherapists Act? (2) Does the minister agree that until the Physiotherapists Act 2005 is proclaimed, there is no legal clause to allow graduates to attain conditional or provisional registration to work? (3) How long will it take for the legal and legislative services division of the Western Australian Department of Health to complete the regulations and for the act to be proclaimed; and, what is the minister doing to expedite the proclamation of the Physiotherapists Act 2005? Mr J.A. McGINTY replied: I thank member for Wagin for some notice of this question and for his enthusiasm for physiotherapy and manipulation! (1) - (3) The University of Notre Dame Australia applied for accreditation for its physiotherapy course in August this year. This is where the problem arose. It normally takes about six months to accredit a course of this nature. The application came in very late, given that the current batch of graduates completed their course at the end of September. Effectively, the application for accreditation of the course was made only one month prior to the students’ graduation. I do not want to make any criticisms; it just happened that way. The Physiotherapists Registration Board of Western Australia cannot recognise this qualification from the University of Notre Dame for the purposes of registration until such time as it is an accredited course. The current physiotherapy legislation makes no provision for any provisional or conditional registrations of physiotherapists. Fortunately, last year this Parliament passed the Physiotherapists Act 2005, which provides for the provisional and conditional registration of physiotherapists. That power will come into effect after the act is proclaimed. The act has not been proclaimed because the regulations have not been drafted. In recent days I signed off on the drafting instructions for the regulations to accompany that act. Now that we have discovered that there is a problem for the graduates of the University of Notre Dame, I have instructed the Department of Health to give top priority to this matter and to move with expedition to draft the regulations. It has advised me that the first draft of those regulations should be ready within a week or two. I will give this issue top priority to ensure that the regulations are promulgated as soon as possible. That will enable the act to be proclaimed, and the new board will be given the power to grant conditional or provisional registration to the UND graduates to enable them to practise. It is my hope that that process will be completed within a matter of weeks, rather than months. I thank the member for drawing this matter to my attention. It will receive urgent consideration.
I will ask this question with a bit more enthusiasm than the member who asked the previous question! I refer to the delay in the accreditation of the first batch of physiotherapy graduates from the University of Notre Dame Australia by the Australian Physiotherapy Council. (1) Does the minister agree that this delay has resulted in those graduates being unable to work as physiotherapists unless they are given conditional or provisional classes of registration under the Physiotherapists Act? (2) Does the minister agree that until the Physiotherapists Act 2005 is proclaimed, there is no legal clause to allow graduates to attain conditional or provisional registration to work? (3) How long will it take for the legal and legislative services division of the Western Australian Department of Health to complete the regulations and for the act to be proclaimed; and, what is the minister doing to expedite the proclamation of the Physiotherapists Act 2005? Mr J.A. McGINTY replied: I thank member for Wagin for some notice of this question and for his enthusiasm for physiotherapy and manipulation! (1) - (3) The University of Notre Dame Australia applied for accreditation for its physiotherapy course in August this year. This is where the problem arose. It normally takes about six months to accredit a course of this nature. The application came in very late, given that the current batch of graduates completed their course at the end of September. Effectively, the application for accreditation of the course was made only one month prior to the students’ graduation. I do not want to make any criticisms; it just happened that way. The Physiotherapists Registration Board of Western Australia cannot recognise this qualification from the University of Notre Dame for the purposes of registration until such time as it is an accredited course. The current physiotherapy legislation makes no provision for any provisional or conditional registrations of physiotherapists. Fortunately, last year this Parliament passed the Physiotherapists Act 2005, which provides for the provisional and conditional registration of physiotherapists. That power will come into effect after the act is proclaimed. The act has not been proclaimed because the regulations have not been drafted. In recent days I signed off on the drafting instructions for the regulations to accompany that act. Now that we have discovered that there is a problem for the graduates of the University of Notre Dame, I have instructed the Department of Health to give top priority to this matter and to move with expedition to draft the regulations. It has advised me that the first draft of those regulations should be ready within a week or two. I will give this issue top priority to ensure that the regulations are promulgated as soon as possible. That will enable the act to be proclaimed, and the new board will be given the power to grant conditional or provisional registration to the UND graduates to enable them to practise. It is my hope that that process will be completed within a matter of weeks, rather than months. I thank the member for drawing this matter to my attention. It will receive urgent consideration.
I refer to the delay in the accreditation of the first batch of physiotherapy graduates from the University of Notre Dame Australia by the Australian Physiotherapy Council. (1) Does the minister agree that this delay has resulted in those graduates being unable to work as physiotherapists unless they are given conditional or provisional classes of registration under the Physiotherapists Act? (2) Does the minister agree that until the Physiotherapists Act 2005 is proclaimed, there is no legal clause to allow graduates to attain conditional or provisional registration to work? (3) How long will it take for the legal and legislative services division of the Western Australian Department of Health to complete the regulations and for the act to be proclaimed; and, what is the minister doing to expedite the proclamation of the Physiotherapists Act 2005? Mr J.A. McGINTY replied: I thank member for Wagin for some notice of this question and for his enthusiasm for physiotherapy and manipulation! (1) - (3) The University of Notre Dame Australia applied for accreditation for its physiotherapy course in August this year. This is where the problem arose. It normally takes about six months to accredit a course of this nature. The application came in very late, given that the current batch of graduates completed their course at the end of September. Effectively, the application for accreditation of the course was made only one month prior to the students’ graduation. I do not want to make any criticisms; it just happened that way. The Physiotherapists Registration Board of Western Australia cannot recognise this qualification from the University of Notre Dame for the purposes of registration until such time as it is an accredited course. The current physiotherapy legislation makes no provision for any provisional or conditional registrations of physiotherapists. Fortunately, last year this Parliament passed the Physiotherapists Act 2005, which provides for the provisional and conditional registration of physiotherapists. That power will come into effect after the act is proclaimed. The act has not been proclaimed because the regulations have not been drafted. In recent days I signed off on the drafting instructions for the regulations to accompany that act. Now that we have discovered that there is a problem for the graduates of the University of Notre Dame, I have instructed the Department of Health to give top priority to this matter and to move with expedition to draft the regulations. It has advised me that the first draft of those regulations should be ready within a week or two. I will give this issue top priority to ensure that the regulations are promulgated as soon as possible. That will enable the act to be proclaimed, and the new board will be given the power to grant conditional or provisional registration to the UND graduates to enable them to practise. It is my hope that that process will be completed within a matter of weeks, rather than months. I thank the member for drawing this matter to my attention. It will receive urgent consideration.
(1) Does the minister agree that this delay has resulted in those graduates being unable to work as physiotherapists unless they are given conditional or provisional classes of registration under the Physiotherapists Act? (2) Does the minister agree that until the Physiotherapists Act 2005 is proclaimed, there is no legal clause to allow graduates to attain conditional or provisional registration to work? (3) How long will it take for the legal and legislative services division of the Western Australian Department of Health to complete the regulations and for the act to be proclaimed; and, what is the minister doing to expedite the proclamation of the Physiotherapists Act 2005? Mr J.A. McGINTY replied: I thank member for Wagin for some notice of this question and for his enthusiasm for physiotherapy and manipulation! (1) - (3) The University of Notre Dame Australia applied for accreditation for its physiotherapy course in August this year. This is where the problem arose. It normally takes about six months to accredit a course of this nature. The application came in very late, given that the current batch of graduates completed their course at the end of September. Effectively, the application for accreditation of the course was made only one month prior to the students’ graduation. I do not want to make any criticisms; it just happened that way. The Physiotherapists Registration Board of Western Australia cannot recognise this qualification from the University of Notre Dame for the purposes of registration until such time as it is an accredited course. The current physiotherapy legislation makes no provision for any provisional or conditional registrations of physiotherapists. Fortunately, last year this Parliament passed the Physiotherapists Act 2005, which provides for the provisional and conditional registration of physiotherapists. That power will come into effect after the act is proclaimed. The act has not been proclaimed because the regulations have not been drafted. In recent days I signed off on the drafting instructions for the regulations to accompany that act. Now that we have discovered that there is a problem for the graduates of the University of Notre Dame, I have instructed the Department of Health to give top priority to this matter and to move with expedition to draft the regulations. It has advised me that the first draft of those regulations should be ready within a week or two. I will give this issue top priority to ensure that the regulations are promulgated as soon as possible. That will enable the act to be proclaimed, and the new board will be given the power to grant conditional or provisional registration to the UND graduates to enable them to practise. It is my hope that that process will be completed within a matter of weeks, rather than months. I thank the member for drawing this matter to my attention. It will receive urgent consideration.
(2) Does the minister agree that until the Physiotherapists Act 2005 is proclaimed, there is no legal clause to allow graduates to attain conditional or provisional registration to work? (3) How long will it take for the legal and legislative services division of the Western Australian Department of Health to complete the regulations and for the act to be proclaimed; and, what is the minister doing to expedite the proclamation of the Physiotherapists Act 2005? Mr J.A. McGINTY replied: I thank member for Wagin for some notice of this question and for his enthusiasm for physiotherapy and manipulation! (1) - (3) The University of Notre Dame Australia applied for accreditation for its physiotherapy course in August this year. This is where the problem arose. It normally takes about six months to accredit a course of this nature. The application came in very late, given that the current batch of graduates completed their course at the end of September. Effectively, the application for accreditation of the course was made only one month prior to the students’ graduation. I do not want to make any criticisms; it just happened that way. The Physiotherapists Registration Board of Western Australia cannot recognise this qualification from the University of Notre Dame for the purposes of registration until such time as it is an accredited course. The current physiotherapy legislation makes no provision for any provisional or conditional registrations of physiotherapists. Fortunately, last year this Parliament passed the Physiotherapists Act 2005, which provides for the provisional and conditional registration of physiotherapists. That power will come into effect after the act is proclaimed. The act has not been proclaimed because the regulations have not been drafted. In recent days I signed off on the drafting instructions for the regulations to accompany that act. Now that we have discovered that there is a problem for the graduates of the University of Notre Dame, I have instructed the Department of Health to give top priority to this matter and to move with expedition to draft the regulations. It has advised me that the first draft of those regulations should be ready within a week or two. I will give this issue top priority to ensure that the regulations are promulgated as soon as possible. That will enable the act to be proclaimed, and the new board will be given the power to grant conditional or provisional registration to the UND graduates to enable them to practise. It is my hope that that process will be completed within a matter of weeks, rather than months. I thank the member for drawing this matter to my attention. It will receive urgent consideration.
(3) How long will it take for the legal and legislative services division of the Western Australian Department of Health to complete the regulations and for the act to be proclaimed; and, what is the minister doing to expedite the proclamation of the Physiotherapists Act 2005? Mr J.A. McGINTY replied: I thank member for Wagin for some notice of this question and for his enthusiasm for physiotherapy and manipulation! (1) - (3) The University of Notre Dame Australia applied for accreditation for its physiotherapy course in August this year. This is where the problem arose. It normally takes about six months to accredit a course of this nature. The application came in very late, given that the current batch of graduates completed their course at the end of September. Effectively, the application for accreditation of the course was made only one month prior to the students’ graduation. I do not want to make any criticisms; it just happened that way. The Physiotherapists Registration Board of Western Australia cannot recognise this qualification from the University of Notre Dame for the purposes of registration until such time as it is an accredited course. The current physiotherapy legislation makes no provision for any provisional or conditional registrations of physiotherapists. Fortunately, last year this Parliament passed the Physiotherapists Act 2005, which provides for the provisional and conditional registration of physiotherapists. That power will come into effect after the act is proclaimed. The act has not been proclaimed because the regulations have not been drafted. In recent days I signed off on the drafting instructions for the regulations to accompany that act. Now that we have discovered that there is a problem for the graduates of the University of Notre Dame, I have instructed the Department of Health to give top priority to this matter and to move with expedition to draft the regulations. It has advised me that the first draft of those regulations should be ready within a week or two. I will give this issue top priority to ensure that the regulations are promulgated as soon as possible. That will enable the act to be proclaimed, and the new board will be given the power to grant conditional or provisional registration to the UND graduates to enable them to practise. It is my hope that that process will be completed within a matter of weeks, rather than months. I thank the member for drawing this matter to my attention. It will receive urgent consideration.
Mr J.A. McGINTY replied: I thank member for Wagin for some notice of this question and for his enthusiasm for physiotherapy and manipulation! (1) - (3) The University of Notre Dame Australia applied for accreditation for its physiotherapy course in August this year. This is where the problem arose. It normally takes about six months to accredit a course of this nature. The application came in very late, given that the current batch of graduates completed their course at the end of September. Effectively, the application for accreditation of the course was made only one month prior to the students’ graduation. I do not want to make any criticisms; it just happened that way. The Physiotherapists Registration Board of Western Australia cannot recognise this qualification from the University of Notre Dame for the purposes of registration until such time as it is an accredited course. The current physiotherapy legislation makes no provision for any provisional or conditional registrations of physiotherapists. Fortunately, last year this Parliament passed the Physiotherapists Act 2005, which provides for the provisional and conditional registration of physiotherapists. That power will come into effect after the act is proclaimed. The act has not been proclaimed because the regulations have not been drafted. In recent days I signed off on the drafting instructions for the regulations to accompany that act. Now that we have discovered that there is a problem for the graduates of the University of Notre Dame, I have instructed the Department of Health to give top priority to this matter and to move with expedition to draft the regulations. It has advised me that the first draft of those regulations should be ready within a week or two. I will give this issue top priority to ensure that the regulations are promulgated as soon as possible. That will enable the act to be proclaimed, and the new board will be given the power to grant conditional or provisional registration to the UND graduates to enable them to practise. It is my hope that that process will be completed within a matter of weeks, rather than months. I thank the member for drawing this matter to my attention. It will receive urgent consideration.
I thank member for Wagin for some notice of this question and for his enthusiasm for physiotherapy and manipulation! (1) - (3) The University of Notre Dame Australia applied for accreditation for its physiotherapy course in August this year. This is where the problem arose. It normally takes about six months to accredit a course of this nature. The application came in very late, given that the current batch of graduates completed their course at the end of September. Effectively, the application for accreditation of the course was made only one month prior to the students’ graduation. I do not want to make any criticisms; it just happened that way. The Physiotherapists Registration Board of Western Australia cannot recognise this qualification from the University of Notre Dame for the purposes of registration until such time as it is an accredited course. The current physiotherapy legislation makes no provision for any provisional or conditional registrations of physiotherapists. Fortunately, last year this Parliament passed the Physiotherapists Act 2005, which provides for the provisional and conditional registration of physiotherapists. That power will come into effect after the act is proclaimed. The act has not been proclaimed because the regulations have not been drafted. In recent days I signed off on the drafting instructions for the regulations to accompany that act. Now that we have discovered that there is a problem for the graduates of the University of Notre Dame, I have instructed the Department of Health to give top priority to this matter and to move with expedition to draft the regulations. It has advised me that the first draft of those regulations should be ready within a week or two. I will give this issue top priority to ensure that the regulations are promulgated as soon as possible. That will enable the act to be proclaimed, and the new board will be given the power to grant conditional or provisional registration to the UND graduates to enable them to practise. It is my hope that that process will be completed within a matter of weeks, rather than months. I thank the member for drawing this matter to my attention. It will receive urgent consideration.
(1) - (3) The University of Notre Dame Australia applied for accreditation for its physiotherapy course in August this year. This is where the problem arose. It normally takes about six months to accredit a course of this nature. The application came in very late, given that the current batch of graduates completed their course at the end of September. Effectively, the application for accreditation of the course was made only one month prior to the students’ graduation. I do not want to make any criticisms; it just happened that way. The Physiotherapists Registration Board of Western Australia cannot recognise this qualification from the University of Notre Dame for the purposes of registration until such time as it is an accredited course. The current physiotherapy legislation makes no provision for any provisional or conditional registrations of physiotherapists. Fortunately, last year this Parliament passed the Physiotherapists Act 2005, which provides for the provisional and conditional registration of physiotherapists. That power will come into effect after the act is proclaimed. The act has not been proclaimed because the regulations have not been drafted. In recent days I signed off on the drafting instructions for the regulations to accompany that act. Now that we have discovered that there is a problem for the graduates of the University of Notre Dame, I have instructed the Department of Health to give top priority to this matter and to move with expedition to draft the regulations. It has advised me that the first draft of those regulations should be ready within a week or two. I will give this issue top priority to ensure that the regulations are promulgated as soon as possible. That will enable the act to be proclaimed, and the new board will be given the power to grant conditional or provisional registration to the UND graduates to enable them to practise. It is my hope that that process will be completed within a matter of weeks, rather than months. I thank the member for drawing this matter to my attention. It will receive urgent consideration.
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