The health and welfare workforces deliver diverse services through many private and public organisations. Combined these services employ more than 1 million people of which there were more than 642 000 health practitioners working in their registered professions in Australia in 2020. This included 105 300 medical practitioners, 350,000 nurses and midwives, 21,500 dental practitioners and 166,000 allied health professionals. In this podcast we will consider more generally the positions of nursing and medical practitioners and a possible future landscape.  In the five years to 2021 only the equivalent of 4200 full-time General Practitioners were added to the workforce and on average both male and female GP’s have been trending towards fewer hours per worker. The AMA’s Plan to Modernize Medicare campaign reported: 1. Australia faces a shortage of more than 10,600 GP’s by 2031-32 and the supply of GP’s falling behind growing community demand.    2. The demand for doctors’ services increased by 58% in the decade to 2019. 3. That the most cost-effective method with the best outcomes for patients is GP led primary care. GP’s provide twice the number of episodes of care as hospitals per year for one sixth the expense. Away from doctors the nursing and midwifery sector represent the largest workforce in the healthcare system accounting for 55% of total workforce however in a recent McKinsey survey one fifth of Australia’s registered nurses said they intended to leave the current role in the next year. Even before the pandemic a shrinking supply of nursing-school graduates and a decline in nurses migrating from other countries to Australia brought about nursing shortages. These short-term demands are superimposed on longer-term demands caused by Australia’s population growth and aging demographic. The McKinsey 2021 Future of Work in Nursing Survey found that in addition to the figure above 41% of nurses surveyed said they were planning to move countries or leave direct-care roles entirely, leading to a calculated deficit of between 20,000 and 40,000 unfilled nursing positions. Similar results have been documented in the United Kingdom, France, Japan, USA, Singapore and Brazil.  In this podcast I was keen to pursue the workforce conditions and future strategies to manage them with Mr Murray Bruce, a young and energetic Lawyer with a welcomingly fresh set of ideas who is Director of Latrobe Community Health Service. Murray has extensive board and governance experience with expertise in strategic planning, risk management, commissioning, change management and policy development. Please welcome Murray to the Podcast. REFERENCES:  Mr Murray Bruce.Board Directors -Gippsland Primary Health Network.gphn.org.au  McKinsey and Company, Should I stay or should I go? Australia’s nurse retention dilemma, Sep 23rd, 2022 AMA report projects “staggering” GP shortage, Nov 25,2022 Health Workforce, Updated July 7, 2022 aihw.gov.au RACGP-Health of the Nation, 2022 racgp.org.au