Primary health care
Assessing Consumer Ratings of Quality in General Practice Needs More Than Just Rating Scales
Accurate assessments of quality in general practice are dependent on the views of health consumers. Currently, consumers’ views of general practice quality are primarily assessed using rating scales. Rating scales are quick, cheap and capable of eliciting large amounts of data from numerous respondents in any easy-to-use and interpret format. But how dependable is the information they present? This article discusses the limitations of ratings scales and proposes mixed-method approaches as a viable alternative to assessing consumer views on quality in general practice
Building community partnerships
Half-day workshop for consumers, carers and community members, staff, managers and board members from primary care services in Victoria. Includes a workshop flier, workshop outline, tips for facilitation, equipment and handouts, workshop evaluation form for participants and a list of references.
Community Participation: A Bottom Up Approach
This article describes how the Mallee Division of General Practice developed a consumer participation strategy, which started with just nine focus groups and led to a network of ongoing groups working, and succeeding at improving health and health services over several years.
Lifestyle factors such as smoking, poor nutrition, immoderate alcohol consumption and inadequate physical activity are major contributors to the increasing Australian prevalence of chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease and type two diabetes. These are associated with physiological risk factors such as hypertension, obesity and high cholesterol. General practitioners are often well placed to provide guidance to people who need to change their habits to improve their health. This article looks at research that focused on how consumers, many with a diagnosis of diabetes, perceived such interventions from general practitioners.
Consumer participation in Australian Divisions of General Practice: a case study
A General Practice Division is a local network of General Practitioners. There are 123 of them across Australia. Many of these Divisions of General Practice have involved consumers and the community in the planning and implementation of their work. The case studies document the rationale for involving consumers; describe the desired outcomes of consumer involvement; the methods employed to involve consumers and the enablers and barriers to consumer participation efforts from both the Division and consumer's perspectives.
Consumer participation in Australian primary care: a literature review
This literature review identifies issues affecting consumer participation in primary care, examines how these differ from those relevant to other health care sectors, and outlines lessons learned to date.
Consumer’s Voices in Victorian Primary Care Partnerships
In 2002, the Victorian Department of Human Services commissioned Health Issues Centre to conduct the Enhancing Consumer, Carer and Community Participation in Primary Care Partnerships project. The project’s aim was to enhance the Primary Care Partnership’s (PCP) capacity to undertake effective consumer, carer and community engagement strategies. During the course of the project Health Issues Centre received a request that the voices of the consumers participating in PCPs also be heard in the project. This paper outlines the methodology and findings of a small study conducted to capture the views of consumers participating in PCPs.
Contents Page Health Issues Journal Number 96
This is an annotated contents page outlining the articles of edition 96 of Health Issues journal focusing on Primary Health
Creating a dialogue in community health at North Yarra Community Health
The project involved creating and working with a team of consumer consultants who represent the various communities which make use of the service. The community consultant role includes networking, gathering views, identifying health iswsues, working in collaboration with the service and other organisations, and reporting back to the community. The report outlines processes used to recruit and train community representatives, examines the complexities of consumer representation and discusses outcomes and lessons learned from the project.
A statewide workshop was convened in February 2001 which has fostered a greater level of communication between the Divisions and consumers across Western Australia. Consumers are indicating that they wish to move to a different participatory mechanism in order to enhance their relationship with the Division movement. A final version of the consumer action plan is being developed and will include a consumer consensus statement. Learning outcomes of the project are also discussed.
Consumer participation is not just about consumers acquiring skills and tools. This project looks at the extent to which doctors are being trained to work in partnership with patients, and what skills are still needed.
Enhancing consumer participation within psychiatric nursing academia
The aim of this consumer/provider partnership was to promote consumer participation in the education of mental health professionals through the creation of a 'consumer academic' staff position at the Centre for Psychiatric Nursing Research and Practice, University of Melbourne. This report outlines the processes through which this position was implemented, details activities undertaken by the consumer academic, and examines key learnings of the project
Family caregivers, patients and physicians: ethical guidance to optimize
A new position paper from the American College of Physicians (ACP) provides ethical guidance to physicians for developing mutually supportive patient-physician-caregiver relationships.
Health Literacy Project in a Community Health Service
This article describes the methods a Victorian community health service used to engage their community in developing health information for the community’s use.
Health Literacy in primary health care
A primary health care system that is appropriate and universally accessible requires and active agenda based on research of approaches to address low literacy, while health care providers should be alert to the widespread problems of literacy which span all age levels
The Barwon Primary Care Forum includes a guide to health information on the Internet, with links to areas of child health and to material in languages other than English
How Patient-centred is Australian General Practice?
Patient-centred care can be described generally as an approach that emphasises attention to patients’ psychosocial as well as physical needs. The approach emphasises that treatment choice takes patient preferences into account, and that self-care is supported as well as treatment. Central to this is the development of a sense of partnership in care, and facilitation of patient involvement in decision making about treatment decisions (Mead et al. 2002). Patients have been found to prefer patient-centred care, and those who receive it, also report better health outcomes (Little et al. 2001). This article examines the analysis of the General Practice Assessment Survey (GPAS) and what it revels about the degree of patient-centred care experienced by participants.
Improving consumer participation in the health system in Central Australia
This report outlines the process of the establishment of a Consumer Reference Group within the Central Australian Division of General Practice and how it was established.
Learning As We Go: Lessons for Australian General Practice after 25 Years of HIV/AIDS
Next year, 2006, will see the 25th anniversary of the world’s first publication about HIV/AIDS. On 5 June 1981, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Surveillance Report of the USA Centre for Disease Control published a report on a strange new condition. This 1981 article was not premature, however, and those working and living in gay communities in Australia and abroad knew that something terrible was happening to members of our communities well before that date. My aim in this article is to share twelve important lessons I have learnt from the management of HIV in Australian general practice over the past 25 years.
focuses on key challenges that the people of the world face today in achieving health: corporate-led globalization, war and occupation, the need for comprehensive and sustainable primary health care, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, environmental damage, discrimination in the right to health, and violence against women.
Primary Care Partnerships: New Directions in Victorian Primary Health Care
The changes to the system of primary health care in Victoria introduced by the former Victorian Liberal government, reflected a particular political philosophy of government, not just a view about health care. These changes, although substantially modified by the subsequent Labor Government, nevertheless are still evident in the current model. This article will describe the current models for primary health care and some of the issues and concerns around primary health care from a consumer perspective.
Primary Care Partnerships: Victoria’s Answer to Primary Care Reform
While all governments recognise that part of the answer to cost containment in the health sector lies in health promotion and a stronger primary care sector, political realities make shifting the balance to increase funding to the primary care sector a daunting task. In Victoria, primary care reform in recent years has seen the formations of Primary Care Partnerships (PCP). This article describes the key elements of PCPs, traces their development and makes some observations about future directions and the challenges involved in the implementation of PCPs.
Primary Care Reform: Consumers Get the Job Done
The South West Primary Care Partnership's Consumer Access to Service Information Project resulted in three consumer-designed Service Information Hubs opened their doors, two in Warrnambool and one in Port Fairy. The project has seen consumers leading the project through every phase. This article reviews the methods and models of consumer participation used within the project, the use of community development strategies as a facilitator between community and bureaucracy within the health reform context, and the challenges the project faces.
Response to General Practice Division Victoria's National Primary Health Policy
In March 2005, General Practice Division Victoria (GPDV) produces its Policy Issues Paper No 22: The Need for a National Primary Health Policy and called for comments. Health Issues Centre's response agreed that the current model of primary care is unsustainable and supports GPDV in their call for a national policy. However, Health Issues Centre argues that the issues addressed in the paper should be seen in the context of the need for a wider national reform agenda.
Response to the Department of Health and Ageing Towards a National Primary Health Care Strategy
Health Issues Centre's Response
South Australian Community Health Research Unit
This research unit at Flinders University supports community and primary health care agencies and groups to carry out research and evaluation, and to use the findings to enhance health in South Australian communities. A particularly useful resource on the site is Planning and Evaluation Wizard, an entertaining and accessible guide to project planning, evaluation, and report writing.
The Role of Emergency Departments as a ‘Safety Net’
Like most hospitals throughout Australia, Victoria's public hospital emergency departments are currently faced with the problem of managing rising demand for their services. This article argues that, although there needs to be an appropriate balance between primary and acute care, emergency departments play an important role as a ‘safety net’ in the health system, providing care to people who are unable to access services elsewhere, including care from general practitioners.
Aboriginal community-controlled health services have, since their establishment in the early 1970s, been a strong expression of the community health model in this country. Through the major health financing reform campaign launched by the Aboriginal Medical Services Alliance (Northern Territory) in the 1990s, major changes have been achieved in Aboriginal health financing for the Aboriginal Community-controlled Health Organisations (ACCHOs) sector. Drawing upon the experiences of implementing the Primary Health Care Access Program in the Northern Territory this article considers the benefits of a mixed grant and Medicare financing model and moves to address the mal-distribution of the medical workforce for the broader health reform agenda.
When Women Talk and Doctors Don’t Believe Them
Communication and mutual respect between health care professionals and the people they provide care for is an important part of the healing process. Unfortunately, many factors can influence the effectiveness of patient-doctor interactions. This article discusses the findings from a qualitative study about women’s experiences of contraceptive surgery, commonly called ‘tubal ligation’. It particularly focuses on how doctors responded when participants raised concerns about a range of issues that could be broadly defined as ‘women’s problems’. The findings highlight the need for doctors to listen to women, taking seriously their health concerns and the knowledge they have of their own bodies. They also raise issues about the role gender and power play in medical encounters.
Women are frequent users of the health care system. Through their lifespan women access general medical practitioners for various reasons ranging from the health of the person they are caring for, to sexual and reproductive health, and emotional and mental health. This article discusses the issues raised by women taking part in Women’s Health In the North’s (WHIN) Community Education Program, which currently focuses on ‘Working Well With Your GP’.
