The contribution of approaches to organisational change in optimising the primary health care workforce

Open Access

Abstract

Australia is facing long term workforce shortages coupled with a population increasingly burdened with chronic disease. The National Chronic Disease Strategy recognises the central role general practice has to play in the prevention, detection and management of chronic illness. Implementing the strategy will require considerable change in the way general practice teams work. Organisational development (OD) is used in businesses to improve how individuals and organisations perform in achieving organisational objectives. We assessed how these practices could be used in a general practice setting. ; The research reported in this paper is a project of the Australian Primary Health Care Research Institute, which is supported by a grant from the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing under the Primary Health Care Research, Evaluation and Development Strategy.