Health & disability professionals

 

Which health and disability professionals provide rehabilitation in New Zealand?

Health professionals who provide rehabilitation services in New Zealand come from a range of different backgrounds and provide a variety of different services.  Some professional groups are regulated under New Zealand law.  These groups must continue meet the requirements of one legislative framework: the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance (HPCA) Act (2003).  The HPCA Act includes mechanisms to ensure that practitioners are competent and fit to practise their professions for the duration of their professional lives.   Some of the groups regulated under the HPCA Act and working in rehabilitation services in New Zealand include doctors, nurses, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, psychologists, psychotherapists, osteopaths and chiropracters.  For a complete list of professional groups regulated by the HPCA Act, click here.

There are however a number of other health professionals who provide rehabilitation services in New Zealand but who are not covered by the HPCA Act.  Some of these groups, such as social workers and speech language therapists, are referred to as important members of interprofessional rehabilitation teams in documents such as the New Zealand Stroke Guidelines and the New Zealand Traumatic Brain Injury Guidelines, despite not being regulated under the HPCA Act.  Other health professionals, such as practitioners of complementary and alternative therapies including acupuncturists, music therapists, and massage therapists, usually sit outside the publicly-funded rehabilitation services - although clearly have ongoing involvement with the general public. (Note: Speech language therapy and acupuncture are however currently being considered by the Ministry of Health for regulation under the HPCA Act.)

 

What does this website offer health and disability professionals?

This website, hosted by the NZRA, offers regular news, information, and debate to connect people involved in rehabilitation throughout New Zealand.  One feature of rehabilitation is that should be interprofessional in nature, and yet so much of our training and continuing education has a single-disciplinary focus.  The NZRA provides a forum for health professionals from different backgrounds to interact with and learn from one another as well as from other stakeholders in the rehabilitation sector (e.g. people who receive rehabilitation services, their family/whanau, and the funders of rehabilitation services.)

The columns in this website have been provided by some of the leaders in the rehabilitation and disability sector.  Columns include opinion peices; interviews with people in the rehabilitation sectors; reviews of recent research, textbooks, internet resources as well as other brick-a-brac.   The emphasis of these features is to promote discussion and debate of contemporary issues in rehabilitation today – to which you are invited to contribute. We believe that there is a growing need for greater communication between the different groups of people involved in rehabilitation: between funders, providers and recipients of rehabilitation services, between different health professional groups, and across different community groups.  We hope this website goes some way towards addressing this need. 

We encourage you to subscribe to our free newsletter and to make use of the ‘comments’ function at the bottom of our webpages to provide your own perspective on our featured columns.   Alternatively, you might like to write a letter to the editor of the website, contributing your opinions about rehabilitation in New Zealand.  Health professionals can also use this website stay up to date with upcoming conferences around New Zealand, particularly those with an interprofessional theme.

Please also consider becoming a financial member of the NZRA.  This only costs $25 per year and your support helps us to run our biennual conferences and keep this website going.  The NZRA is a small non-profit organisation, which relies on the contribution of its members to continue running and keep growing.

 

How do I find out more about health professionals in New Zealand?

Regulatory Authorities

The following is a list of links to some of the regulatory bodies for professions regulated under the HPCA Act.  These regulatory bodies provide authorisation for individuals to practice under certain job titles (such as medical doctor, physiotherapist, nurse etc) and monitor these indiviudals' ongoing competence to provide services within their professional scope of practice.  For more information about regulatory bodies, click here.

 

Professional Societies

The following is a list of links to societies and organisations for specific professional groups.  These organisation represent and advocate for their own professional group.  Contact us, if you would like to have other added.

 

Links of interest

 

 

 

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Claire FreemanClaire Freeman
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