The Andrews Labor Government is growing Victoria’s healthcare workforce – recruiting more than 1,200 doctors, nurses, midwives and allied health professionals from overseas so Victorians get the care they deserve.

Minister for Health Mary-Anne Thomas today visited the Royal Melbourne Hospital, to meet some of the 1,241 international healthcare workers – including Australian healthcare workers returning home – who have come from all around the world to work in Victoria.

Now working across 40 health services in both metro Melbourne and regional Victoria, our new recruits have helped hospitals grow their ranks – easing pressure on our existing workforce, helping bring down surgery waitlists, reducing workload in our emergency departments and ensuring patients receive care as fast as possible.

Late last year, the Labor Government launched an international recruitment campaign targeting overseas healthcare workers and promoting Victoria as a great place to live and work. The campaign has been a success, with 980 new staff now working at a metropolitan hospital and 261 in regional Victoria.

While the new workforce is largely made up of talented, hardworking doctors and nurses, we’ve also seen a number of other positions filled across allied health and other healthcare services.

The campaign ran in a number of countries with the biggest success in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Ireland, Hong Kong and Sri Lanka.

These additional healthcare workers are some of more than 26,500 extra healthcare workers who have joined the state’s public health system since 2014, including 8,500 who joined the workforce during the pandemic.

The Labor Government’s international recruitment campaign is just one of many measures introduced to support Victoria’s healthcare workforce alongside our $270 million investment to make nursing and midwifery free to study, and recruit and train 17,000 nurses and midwives.

As we grow our workforce, we’re also investing in our hospitals, including the biggest health infrastructure project in Australia’s history – investing $5-6 billion for massive upgrades at the RMH and the Royal Women’s Hospital and a brand-new medical precinct in the new suburb of Arden.

These investments are part of our long-term strategy to build a better health system so every Victorian can get the care they need, when they need it.