October 2025

Issue 15 – October 2025

From the Chair
Priority news
- Registration renewal: multifactor authentication and your new Ahpra portal
Board news
What’s new?
Want more information?

From the Chair

The profession continues to grow with more than 26,600 paramedics now registered in Australia, working across both the public and private sectors. The Board is continuing to develop a proposal to regulate advanced practice paramedicine through attainment of an area of practice endorsement and an endorsement for the use of scheduled medicines. We aim to submit the proposal to Australian health ministers shortly for their consideration.

All paramedics need to renew their registration by 30 November 2025. Emails inviting you to renew went out in early October, and the process is slightly different this year. Read more below.

Thank you all for your continuing contributions to the profession and the work of the Board. As this is the last newsletter for this year, we wish you a joyful festive season and a happy and prosperous New Year.

As always, take care, be safe and look out for each other wherever you may be practising.

Professor Stephen Gough ASM
Chair, Paramedicine Board of Australia

Priority news

Registration renewal: multifactor authentication and your new Ahpra portal

Registration renewal is now open. Make sure to renew your registration by 30 November 2025 to avoid paying a late fee. 

If you don’t renew before 31 December 2025, your registration will lapse, you’ll be removed from the register of practitioners, and you won’t be able to use the protected title, paramedic. 

Ahpra has a new online portal to manage all aspects of your registration, including multifactor authentication (MFA) to provide an extra layer of security protecting your data.

Before you renew, you will need to link an authenticator app to your portal. This app generates a one-time 6-digit code and is more secure than sending the code by SMS. Every time you log in, you’ll enter:

your username
your password
the 6-digit code from the app.

If you already know your username and password, you can log in now and link MFA. If you’re not sure what your username is, you can wait. We send an email with your username before you need to renew. If you share your email account with someone else, such as your partner, or use a group email such as ‘[email protected]’ then you will need to change it to an email that is unique to you when you first log in. There’s information available on the Ahpra portal help centre on how to do this.

Need help with your portal?

Here is where you can find more help about logging in to your portal and linking MFA:

If you get stuck, try the troubleshooting tips, or use the portal help centre chatbot. You can also contact Ahpra’s Customer Service team.

Board news

Graduates – apply for registration now

Your Ahpra portal

The first step in applying for registration is to create your Ahpra portal and link multifactor authentication. Your portal is where you will manage all aspects of your registration throughout your career as a registered paramedic.

We have an online portal help centre with step-by-step instructions and videos on how to create your portal and securely link your multifactor authentication app.

Information to help with your application

On the Graduate applications page of the Ahpra website, you will find helpful guides on completing your application for registration, tips for how to avoid delays, and information flyers you can download for working offline. There is also a page of frequently asked questions that go into more detail on a range of topics.

Meeting the registration standards

You may need to provide supporting documents with your application to prove that you meet the Board’s registration standards including meeting the English language skills requirements. Make sure you provide all the documents we need with your application so we can assess it quicker.

How long does it take to assess my application?

We can’t finalise your application until we receive your graduation results from your education provider.

If you’ve submitted everything needed to prove you’ve met the requirements for registration, we aim to finalise your application within two weeks of receiving your graduation results.

For more information, read the news item.

Revised fact sheet: Dual registration with the Nursing and Midwifery Board and Paramedicine Board

The fact sheet, first published in 2019, was redrafted with input from key stakeholders across the nursing, midwifery and paramedicine professions to ensure it is contemporary and fit for purpose. It contains minor updates to clarify requirements around recency of practice, continuing professional development, and pathways for re-entry to practice.

To consolidate information, the previously separate fact sheets for nurses and midwives have been combined into a single fact sheet. There have been no changes to the requirements for dual registered practitioners. The revised fact sheet is published on the Paramedicine Board and NMBA websites.

Read the revised fact sheet.

Latest workforce data released

The Board’s quarterly registration data to 30 June 2025 has been released. At this date, there were 26,603 registered paramedics in Australia. Of these, 25,760 had general registration and 847 had non-practising registration

Paramedic numbers by gender (general and non-practising registration

By gender, the national percentages are 52% female (13,838), 47.9% male (12,753) and 0.1% (12) not stated, intersex or indeterminate.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander paramedic

There are 575 paramedics who identify as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander, representing 2.2 per cent of the profession.

For more details, including registration data by principal place of practice, age and gender, visit our Statistics page.

What’s new?

Review presents opportunities for Ahpra’s regulatory reform agenda

Ahpra welcomed the release of the independent review of complexity in the National Registration and Accreditation Scheme (Dawson review) second consultation paper and thanked the reviewer Ms Sue Dawson and her team for their comprehensive work.

Ahpra supports in principle the review’s recommendations, many of which are in lockstep with Ahpra’s current reform agenda.

The reforms centre around:

Regulatory action and leadership to minimise and prevent harm to the public, especially in response to emerging healthcare challenges.
Strengthening notification processes and investment to support better timeliness, transparency, and procedural fairness.
Evolution of national health regulation including a national framework that ensures a risk-based approach is taken and that health professionals are regulated according to public safety needs.

Ahpra CEO Justin Untersteiner said the review presents an exciting opportunity for the next chapter in regulation.

‘The National Scheme is facing challenges it has not previously encountered,’ he said.

‘The time is right to take the National Scheme forward to meet the evolving needs of contemporary regulation. I look forward to working with stakeholders to bring the recommendations of the review to life.’

Read the full media release.

Rebate now in place for parental and other types of leave

Practitioners taking parental leave can have money back in their pockets, as Ahpra’s parental leave fee relief policy is now in effect.

A 30 per cent rebate on annual renewal fees is available for health practitioners who take parental leave and certain other forms of leave. That will deliver rebates of up to $308, depending on registration type, while a wider review of fee policies continues.

‘We have listened to concerns and understand the cost-of-living pressures that practitioners who are parents, are pregnant, or have disability or carer responsibilities can face,’ Ahpra CEO Justin Untersteiner said.

‘Today is an important step in our ongoing process of making registration fee arrangements fairer and more flexible.’

The rebate applies to practitioners who take leave for at least six continuous months on the grounds of a protected attribute, such as parental leave and certain other forms of leave such as disability and carer’s leave.

A practitioner can claim the rebate at the next renewal after the six-month period of leave ends. It is available for future renewals, noting that the timing of annual renewals will vary.

Work has also started to improve processes when transitioning between practising and non-practising registration, as the annual cost for this has now been capped.

A wider review is currently looking at how a pro rata approach to fees can be implemented. It is expected to report by November 2025 with recommendations aimed at coming into effect by 1 July 2026.

Visit the Fee relief for parental and other types leave webpage for more information and to read the full policy.

Need a receipt or tax invoice? Here’s what you need to know

Receipts or tax invoices for payments made to Ahpra in the 2024–25 financial year will be emailed to you directly – they won’t be available in the Ahpra portal.

If you paid after 18 March 2025

You’ll receive your receipt or tax invoice shortly after your payment via email.

If you paid between 1 July 2024 and 18 March 2025

We’ll email your receipt or tax invoice from mid-June 2025. Be sure to check both your inbox and spam/junk folder.

If you haven’t received it by mid-July, please submit an online enquiry, and let us know you need a receipt or tax invoice for the 2024–25 financial year.

Need a receipt or tax invoice for a previous year?

For payments made before July 2024, please submit an online enquiry and specify which financial year(s) you need. We’ll email the relevant documents once we receive your request.

National Law amendment information guides out now

New resources are now available to help practitioners understand and adapt to changes to the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law, which will come into effect over the next 12 months.

Information on the changes, how they will be implemented and what they mean for practitioners and the public is available in the full information guide, while the two-page short guide provides a high-level snapshot of the changes.

Both guides are available on the National Law amendments page on the Ahpra website which includes links to related topics and will be updated as our implementation activities progress.

The changes to the National Law were passed earlier this year, focusing on:

stronger consumer and notifier protections (including around non-disclosure agreements)
permanently publishing information on the register for practitioners that have been found by a tribunal to have engaged in professional misconduct that includes sexual misconduct
requiring practitioners across Australia to get a reinstatement order from a tribunal when they seek to return the register after being cancelled and/or disqualified.

Guidance on medicinal cannabis prescribing targets unsafe practice

Ahpra and the National Boards have published guidance on the prescribing of medicinal cannabis after concerning reports of patients presenting to emergency departments with medicinal cannabis-induced psychosis.

The guidance reminds prescribers that medicinal cannabis should be treated as a medicine and to be as careful and diligent when prescribing medicinal cannabis as they are when prescribing other drugs of dependence.

‘We don’t prescribe opioids to every patient who asks for them, and medicinal cannabis is no different. Patient demand is no indicator of clinical need,’ Medical Board of Australia Chair, Dr Susan O’Dwyer said.

The guidance addresses concerns that profits are being prioritised over patient safety and aims to support practitioners to provide safe care, particularly for those patients at most risk of harm.

Adjunct Professor Veronica Casey AM, Chair of the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia, urges nurse practitioners within the industry to combine this guidance with their professional practice framework when conducting assessments.

‘Nurses and other registered practitioners must provide holistic care in all areas of their practice. They must take their professional responsibilities with them no matter where they work,’ Adjunct Professor Casey said.

Safe prescribing of medicinal cannabis includes assessing patients thoroughly, formulating and implementing a management plan, facilitating coordination and continuity of care, maintaining medical records, recommending treatments only where there is an identified therapeutic need, ensuring medicinal cannabis is never a first line treatment, and developing an exit strategy from the beginning.

You can read the full media release and the guidance on the Ahpra website.

Want more information?

Visit the Board’s website for fact sheets and FAQs that help answer common questions about paramedic registration, and professional standards, codes and guidelines.
For employers of paramedics, we have specific information to help you in the Fact sheet: Employer obligations under the National Law.
Lodge an online enquiry form.
For registration enquiries, call 1300 419 495 (from within Australia) or +61 3 9285 3010 (for overseas callers).
Address mail correspondence to: Professor Stephen Gough ASM, Chair, Paramedicine Board of Australia, GPO Box 9958, Melbourne, VIC 3001.