KEY POINTS:
The number of nursing graduates in South Auckland is expected to grow by two-thirds under a proposal to build a new centre of health training, research and development near Middlemore Hospital.
The Counties Manukau District Health Board management unveiled the scheme yesterday for the facility to be built at its western campus, over the railway line from Middlemore.
Called the Centre for Health Services Innovation, it will involve the health board, Auckland University and its South Auckland Clinical School, Manukau Institute of Technology (MIT) and AUT University.
One of its main purposes will be to train doctors, nurses and other health workers, but it will also:
* Provide training for health leaders, both clinical and managerial.
* Develop new models of clinical care.
* Link healthcare research and best practice.
* Foster innovation in medical devices.
DHB and community health services are predicted to need 800 to 1000 new health practitioners and care workers a year in the future.
It is hoped the centre will boost the district's low levels of participation in tertiary education, reducing the reliance of the board and community health services on health workers from other areas including overseas-trained staff.
It will have a particular emphasis on increasing the number of health workers who are Maori, Pacific or Asian. Eighteen per cent of the district's population are Maori and 22 per cent are Pacific Islanders, yet in MIT's nursing programme, just 9 per cent are Maori and 14 per cent Pacific Islanders.
Health board chief executive Geraint Martin said it was planned to seek approval from the Ministry of Health by the end of the year to proceed with the centre, which it was hoped would be running by 2011.
It would cost about $40 million.
