Hamilton Centre Podcast | Exploring Mental Health & Addiction · Hamilton Centre

EP 10 - How workforce investment builds stronger, more sustainable systems of integrated care

·49 min·3 clips

Ravi Bhatt says Victoria has more staff after the Royal Commission, but regional services can still feel like they're "on the edge of failure."

1. Hamilton Centre Podcast episode 10 focuses on how workforce investment builds stronger, more sustainable systems of integrated care in Victoria. 2. Shalini Arunagiri is the Hamilton Centre Clinical Director, Professor Dan Lubman chairs the panel, and the panellists are Ravi Bhatt, Maddy Haradance, and Leigh Allen. 3. The episode asks how Victoria can grow an integrated AOD, mental health, and addiction workforce without losing people to burnout, funding fragility, and siloed training. 4. Ravi Bhatt says Royal Commission reforms increased workforce numbers, but regional services can still feel like "complex systems on the edge of failure." 5. Ravi Bhatt uses Shepparton and Goulburn Valley Health to show how small integrated AOD and mental health teams can collapse if one person leaves. 6. Ravi Bhatt says more than half of his registrar positions depend on federal STP and ARTP funding, so a funding review could undo the training pipeline. 7. Maddy Haradance says nurses and midwives cannot enter AOD and integrated care if those pathways are not visible from the start. 8. Maddy Haradance says her Bachelor of Nursing had "very little to zero AOD" content, and she argues that undergrad training still routes people away from holistic career progression. 9. Maddy Haradance says 2,000-plus graduating nurses and midwives in Victoria currently do not have jobs, and she wants them channelled into AOD and integrated models of care. 10. Leigh Allen says addiction should have a rightful place in the medical curriculum and that exposure across health disciplines reduces stigma and increases interest. 11. Leigh Allen recalls lobbying for Royal Commission funding to build tools for the broader faculty, not just medicine, and to support placements across health disciplines. 12. Leigh Allen says the Psychiatry College needed flexibility on supervision because there were not enough specialists, and that addiction specialists now supervise trainees alongside psychiatrists. 13. Leigh Allen says addiction jobs still sit in specialist silos rather than being fully integrated into area mental health services. 14. Ravi Bhatt says retention improves when leadership treats supervision as essential work and when workforce discussions stay on standing governance agendas rather than only crisis KPIs. 15. Maddy Haradance points to the RUSON model, saying student nurses employed in health services have higher retention, reduced transition shock, and a stronger sense of belonging. 16. Maddy Haradance says Turning Point has trained over 4,000 nurses and midwives since 2016 through a free, funded, hybrid AOD program. 17. The panel's tone is practical and reform-focused, with each speaker drawing on training, supervision, and service design examples. 18. The format is a moderated panel with back-and-forth responses, audience questions, and repeated references to workforce, funding, and service integration. 19. Best for nurses, psychiatrists, managers, and workforce planners in Victoria. 20. Less useful for listeners seeking a personal story or a clinical case narrative.

As heard by us

A measured case for sustained workforce investment in integrated care.

This panel treats workforce investment as a core part of building stronger, more sustainable integrated care, and it stays with that point throughout.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

If you want the case for workforce investment behind integrated care in Victoria, start here.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Hamilton Centre Podcast | Exploring Mental Health & Addiction