Mary Chiarella
Mary’s career spans 40 years both in the United Kingdom and Australia. Mary is Professor Emerita, Susan Wakil School of Nursing at the University of Sydney. In 2003/04 she was the Chief Nursing Officer, NSW Health Department and prior to that was the Foundation Professor of Nursing in Corrections Health, with the University of Technology, Sydney. Mary is a Board member of Northern Sydney LHD and chairs their Health Care Quality Committee. She also serves on the Health Ethics Advisory Panel to the NSW Minister for Health and the Clinical Governance Advisory Committee to Healthdirect Australia.
Mary was awarded an AM for significant contributions to nursing and midwifery education and healthcare standards in June 2019.
Mary's recent articles
8 April 2025
If I were the minister for health...
When preparing for this, I did look back at what I had written in 2022 on the same topic and I’m sad to report, dear reader, that our current minister hasn’t implemented many of my innovative suggestions from last time, apart from some minor parts of my suggestions about workforce planning.
16 October 2024
Singing from the same hymn sheet – solutions for mental health care in Australia
At a time when there is a surge in mental health disorders in young Australians of 47 per cent over 15 years and the health system is struggling to cope with the growing complexity and demand, multidisciplinary solutions are being proposed between the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, the Australian College of Mental Health Nurses and other consumer and health professional groups.
26 September 2024
Nurse-led clinics: getting a return on your taxpayer dollar
It is disappointing, although hardly surprising, to see the medical organisations in July of this year trotting out their opposition to anything other than GP-led primary health care in both Queensland and the ACT; and then (again in a September media release) to see that remarkably (or maybe predictably) the RACGP is restoking its outrage about the ACT clinics.
6 November 2023
Consistency in MBS policy a further unlevelling of the playing field
Plus a change, plus c'est la mme chose. The Medical Benefits Schedule (MBS) Review Advisory Committee (MRAC) has been tasked with supporting a continuous review framework that ensures the MBS is contemporary, sustainable, evidence- based, and supports universal access to high value care for all Australians. Good about time.
14 July 2023
Curiouser and curiouser Western Australian Wonderland
It is often said that truth is stranger than fiction and indeed, that is the way I am feeling about the news that the Australian Medical Association (WA Branch), which has a registered training organisation (RTO) that offers a number of short courses and certificate and diploma programs, has recently advertised a Diploma in Nursing.
14 May 2023
Funding the care in Primary Health Care
This has been a very good week for the recipients of primary health care (PHC) in Australia. However, a week where PHC gets a significant funding boost is also a good week for the recipients of secondary, tertiary and quaternary health care in Australia, as it means that the right people get the right care in the right place.
14 April 2023
Strength, will and knowledge: critical components for aged care nursing
Staffing and skill mix is at a crisis point in private aged care, and it must be fixed. We must show solidarity for the needs of our ageing population, because how we treat our elderly says everything about our values as a nation.
19 February 2023
Asking the question: making the first move in Voluntary Assisted Dying
On the 28th November 2023 the Voluntary Assisted Dying Act 2022 (NSW) (the NSW VAD Act) will come into force.
10 February 2023
The myth of meritocracy: Resisting the Strengthening Medicare Taskforce Report
The vehemence with which the medical profession opposes any moves on behalf of nurses and other health professionals to move legitimately into Primary Health Care in their own right is telling. A system in which some professional groups spend an inordinate amount of time propping up the work of another is not to be abandoned lightly.
1 November 2022
The Strengthening Medicare Taskforce: Making everyone equal at the front door of the health system
Following the outcome of this years Federal Election, Health Minister Mark Butler convened the Strengthening Medicare Taskforce (SMT).
31 August 2022
The strengthening medicare taskforce: All healthcare workers are on the front line. Lets get them on the front foot
Following the outcome of this years Federal Election, Health Minister Mark Butler convened the Strengthening Medicare Taskforce (SMT).
18 August 2022
What the strengthening Medicare Taskforce: Must do to modernise the primary health care workforce
The first of the five focus areas identified by the Strengthening Medicare Taskforce is to have a reliable training and development pipeline, to build a strong and vibrant primary health care workforce. This is a logical and critical first step, but it is a well-known maxim that form must follow function.
14 July 2022
Time to unleash the full potential of nurses
If we want to improve the health of Australia, we cannot continue to under-use the largest workforce in primary health care.
12 May 2022
If I were the Federal Minister for Health
I would introduce a new way of paying health providers, address the Commonwealth/State blame game and reform the health workforce.
28 February 2022
Investing in community health is the solution to our aged care crisis
The problems in residential aged care are a product of a much broader issue, namely the failure to fund publicly subsidised comprehensive multidisciplinary community care.
13 January 2022
Dear politicians in Canberra and Sydney: caring for us means you need to tell us the truth
We dont want spin and false promises. Even if the system is in good shape, many of the people in that system are not feeling the same.
27 November 2021
Aged care advisory council needs strong nursing voices
Gobsmackingly, the new National Aged Care Advisory Council has been formed without any nursing groups represented.
21 September 2021
How nurse practitioners have been shut out of the vaccine rollout
Privately practising nurse practitioners offer the best solution for vaccinated marginalised populations, but they have been excluded from access to Commonwealth emergency pandemic vaccines.
28 June 2021
Nobodys handmaiden: how nurses are taking on the top jobs despite opposition.
For so many years, nurses have been viewed as doctors handmaidens, as subordinate professionals. Indeed, the way in which the medically-dominated Medical Benefits Schedule Review Taskforce (MBSRT) treated the 14 evidence-based, patient-focussed, recommendations of its own Nurse Practitioner Reference Group (NPRG) namely, by rejecting all of them suggests that for some medical practitioners, these images are still current enough for them to feel they can treat the nursing profession with disdain.
24 March 2021
Vaccine rollout hindered by lack of recognition for nurse practitioners
A general practitioner will be required to supervise nurse practitioners as they administer the COVID-19 vaccine, a decision that was made without concerns of health and safety. This means under-resourced and at-risk communities will be slower to gain access to the vaccine,
14 February 2021
Serving the underserved: nurse practitioners' invaluable roles during Covid
A Nurse Practitioner (NP) is a Registered Nurse with the experience and expertise to diagnose and treat people of all ages with a variety of acute or chronic health conditions. NPs have completed additional university study at Masters degree level and are the most senior clinical nurses in our health care system.
16 December 2020
A perverse, offensive and oppressive rejection of nurses
The Medicare Benefits Schedule Review Taskforce further curtails Nurse Practitioner practice - a case of unenlightened self-interest?
25 November 2020
The Brereton Report: what the military can learn from the health system
The Brereton Report makes for uncomfortable reading. Its findings and recommendations principally focus on individuals and their conduct, including unlawful acts, wilful misreporting, falsifying records, failing to exercise proper control over subordinates, giving false evidence and suborning colleagues to give false evidence.
19 October 2020
The lack of integration in Australia's health workforce. There are unconnected silos everywhere.
We urgently needed healthcare reforms :better workforce planning: more equitable workforce distribution,more efficient workforce utilisation,improved workforce productivity and financing reforms to sustain these changes. We call for the restoration of an independent health workforce agency to drive this essential work.
20 September 2020
Home based and community health care
Home based care and community health teams require a diversity of funding models. Post COVID ,it is most unlikely that community health care will return to its pre-COVID state.
11 August 2020
To mask or not to mask? Is that the question?
The debate about wearing masks during the COVID-19 pandemic has fluctuated, but there now seems to be consensus that it is safer for the public to wear masks to avoid or at least reduce community transmission.
8 August 2020
Nurses, COVID-19 and the risks they run for us.
Nurses and other health care workers (HCWs) around the world are serving us well and at great risk to themselves. Many are exhausted but are carrying on. Still others are re-entering the workforce to assist in enabling surge capacity, so there is no shortage of goodwill and altruism.