As Chair of the Council, our organisation embarks on 2022 knowing that Australia and much of the international community are living through further disruption and challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Council, our customers and our people are impacted in numerous ways by this pandemic.
Over the last 2 years, our work has been disrupted and we have needed to adapt, work flexibly and develop alternate ways to continue delivering our accreditation and assessment services.
Many candidates’ clinical assessments have been cancelled and rescheduled due to government-imposed lockdowns, border closures and travel restrictions, or because of other COVID-19 related reasons such as contracting COVID or being a close contact.
Like many people, we’ve also had Council Directors, committee members and staff whose families have tested positive to COVID-19, and experienced various degrees of physical, emotional and mental challenges related to the pandemic.
All of these scenarios carry a significant human burden/impact, and as a people-focused organisation, we acknowledge and recognise this for our customers and the Council’s people. In these unprecedented times, each one of us needs to dig deep and care for ourselves, our families, colleagues and communities in order to keep moving forward with hope and optimism for the future. The Council recognises that our work must continue and will grow and develop with innovations born out of necessity.
The Council’s Board and staff remain focused on ‘ensuring tomorrow’s physiotherapy workforce’, as we accredit physiotherapy university programs and assess overseas qualified physiotherapists seeking to join the Australian profession.
As evidence of our ongoing commitment and focus, the Council refreshed our Strategy Plan in late 2021 with a view to developing a strong strategic foundation for the coming years.
In the next 3 years we intend the Council will invest energy and resources into delivering the following:
- A global leader in safeguarding the standards of physiotherapy practice
- Innovation in assessment methodology
- Leveraging accreditation to drive key priorities of NRAS
- An ethical collaborator across borders to shape the physiotherapy workforce of tomorrow
Our organisational values continue to play a central role in enabling us to serve our stakeholders and customers and consistently deliver our high-quality services, whether in a pandemic era or not.
In 2022, the Council will continue to undertake important projects such as the Physiotherapy Regulation and Accreditation (PRA) network, Remote Clinical, and the Assessment Review Project. We believe this valuable work will lead to progress towards the achievement of our 3-year goals and ‘ensuring tomorrow’s physiotherapy workforce’.
From Melissa Locke, Chair of the Board of Directors