Empowering the health care workforce through education and training
SEMPHN is committed to providing education and training events for primary health care professionals across south eastern Melbourne.
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One of our core functions is to build workforce capacity and capability in line with national primary care reforms. Our focus is to provide needs-based and targeted education opportunities for local health care providers to support their capacity to deliver quality care to our workforce.
During the year, we continued to hold online and face to face events, and launched 2024 with the improved SEMPHN Practice Coaching website, supporting health care professionals in south east Melbourne to kick start their personal learning journey with the enhanced e-learning platform.
Combined, these activities drew in a combined 4,860 attendees, from online education users and course enrolments.
Learning and Networking
Every second month SEMPHN hosted free online and in-person Practice Network Meetings for practice managers and practice nurses to learn from key speakers and network with their peers.
The topics for the learning sessions were informed by current challenges faced by practice managers and nurses and covered topical health issues and important protocol updates.
As part of our yearly planning and schedule, we collaborated with leading health providers and organisations – and our local Practice Managers Brains Trust, who guide us with on the ground advice - to provide specialised and accredited training opportunities for health professionals.
A snapshot of 2023–2024 education opportunities
SEMPHN Hosted Practice Networks
- Cybersecurity
- Care Planning
- Recruiting and retaining staff
- Infection Control
- Workplace Psychosocial Health and Safety
- Navigating My Medicare
- Person-Centred Care
- Change Management
- Burns and Wound Care
- Managing Business Costs
Other SEMPHN hosted events
- Digital Health - POLAR training, My Health Record
- Palliative Care - Advanced Care Planning and decision making
- Chronic Disease Management - Care Coordination
- Cancer Screening
- Adult and Youth Mental Health topics
- Suicide Prevention
- My Medicare information session
Collaborative/Co-designed events
Planned and delivered with other Primary Health Networks, Primary Health Units, Health Services and external organisations, both public and private.
from SEMPHN catchment
- Statewide PHN Immunisation Forum
- Digital Health - Managing My Health Records
A look inside our Face-to-Face events held during 2023-2024
In November 2023 and April 2024, general practice staff, including GPs, practice managers, practice nurses and reception staff, attended our in-person education events.
Held at local venues within the SEMPHN catchment – (Spring Valley Golf Club in Heatherton and Atura Hotel in Dandenong), these events provided an opportunity for people to network and for SEMPHN to say thank you to our very hard-working practices.
The sessions were presented by guest speaker, trainer and coach Tanya Heaney Voogt who discussed ‘Embracing and growing through change’ and ‘Demystifying workplace psychosocial health & safety’.
What attendees had to say:
The speaker was one of the best speakers I have come across. Engaging and made the topic interesting so you wanted to hear more…
Great opportunity to network. The time, length and speaker all really good!
This was an excellent presentation and covered the issues that I needed clarification on.
Perfect length for after work, perfect content :)
A very informative webinar
said that the SEMPHN Practice Network sessions were entirely relevant to their practices
said that their learning outcomes were entirely met
Enhanced Practice Coaching e-learning platform
Health workforce development is one of the three core functions, as outlined by the Australian Government, for Primary Health Networks. Specifically, this is to:
"Capacity-build and provide practice support to primary care and mental health providers to support quality care delivery."
To support this, and as part of the strategic plan to build capacity for high quality, accessible, integrated and vibrant primary health care, SEMPHN provides online education for general practices via its Practice Coaching e-learning platform.
December saw the launch of the upgraded website developed to improve our support of general practitioners.
Teams from across the organisation worked hard behind the scenes to support the creation of the revamped site, including testing the new learning environment, to ensure its effectiveness and efficiency as a leading Learning Management System for general practice in south east Melbourne.
New look and functionality - improving the user experience, and making learning more accessible:
- Users now have a unique login enabling better access to their personal learning journey, including progress tracking on the ‘My Learning’ dashboard
- Training histories are available to download to provide proof of continuing professional development (CPD)
- Better access to exploring a broader catalogue of available and new learning modules
- The new look and feel now visually aligns with other SEMPHN products.
Since launching in December, the upgraded platform has seen:
Unique users
enrolments into courses
Top 5 modules:
Triage in General Practice; Customer Service; Using a Team Approach; Work, Health and Safety; Introduction to Privacy
Up next:
Increasing cancer screening rates for First Nations peoples in South East Melbourne
Focusing on early detection and prevention, a spotlight on the new outreach program supporting First Nations participation in screening to reduce high rates of avoidable deaths from breast cancer.
