Women's health
Bendigo Regional BreastScreen Consumer Advisory Group: Working Together to Represent Women
BreastScreen Victoria is part of the national mammography screening program, BreastScreen Australia. The program provides free mammography to eligible asymptomatic women, over 50 years of age. Bendigo Regional BreastScreen is one of eight screening assessment services in Victoria and covers a large geographical area. There is one fixed screening site in Bendigo and regular screening with the Mobile Screening Service at Echuca, Kerang and Swan Hill. This article reports on the consumer participation activities at Bendigo Regional BreastScreen from the inception of the screening program and includes the work of its Consumer Advisory Group.
Breast Cancer Knowledge On-Line: Towards Meeting Diverse Information Needs
For women diagnosed with breast cancer, timely, accurate and relevant information is a must. Difficult treatment decisions often need to be made and various options considered within a relatively short time-frame, sometimes when the trauma of diagnosis is still present. Too often the information provided to help with these decisions ignores the diversity and dynamic nature of the target audiences, their information preferences, needs, and sadly, intelligence. This article describes how the Breast Cancer Knowledge On-line Research Project set about researching these issues with the aim of providing a ‘gateway’ to both sources and resources which would ‘tailor’ information to the consumers’ diverse needs.
Breast Cancer Network Australia
Breast Cancer Network Australia (BCNA) is driven by women who have experienced breast cancer. BCNA's role is to empower, inform, represent and link together Australians personally affected by breast cancer. The site has a Victorian page that includes a list of support groups and local events.
This USA site promotes safe, effective and satisfying evidence-based maternity care. It aims to help women and health professioaternity care decisions.
Consumer Participation at Women’s and Children’s Health
Consumer participation at Women’s and Children’s Health (the Royal Women’s Hospital and the Royal Children’s Hospital) has been undertaken at a variety of formal and informal levels for a number of years. Participation strategies have included community consultation for service planning, community advisory committees, consumer liaison/advocate positions, development of charters of consumers’ rights and responsibilities, patient satisfaction surveys and focus groups. This article gives a snapshot of past and present consumer oriented activities at Women’s and Children’s Health, together with the findings of a survey conducted to explore staff views about consumer participation.
Desperate Danielle: How does she kake sense of the hype about Herceptin?
Headlines such as: “Mortgaging my house is the only option I have to raise $60,000”, are indicative of the hype and emotion that has surrounded the recent release of clinical trial data on the use of herceptin® for women with early breast cancer. But what these headlines and the majority of accompanying stories fail to address are the following crucial questions: Is there really a major benefit to women from this new drug? Is time important? Is the cost worth it? How do women make sense of the situation? How can women make informed choices about whether or not this is a drug for them? This article explores these issues from a consumer perspective.
Early Parenting Difficulties: Implications for Health Services Policy
Australia’s residential early parenting centres are unique internationally and provide a highly valued service to parents and their very young children. Clinical practice in these services has been based on extensive experience, but now needs to be derived from an evidence base. In response to this need, Tweddle Child and Family Health Service (TCFHS) in Melbourne — a public access early parenting service — commissioned a review of the literature relating to its practice and a prospective longitudinal survey of a consecutive group of mothers admitted with infants aged up to one year. This article summarises the main findings of both the literature review and the survey.
This edition of Health Issues focuses on women’s health at an important time in the evolution of women’s equality in Australia. With the early signs of a changed national public policy environment following the 2007 election of a federal Labor government, it is important to be reminded of our shared history, as Gwendolyn Gray does in her analysis. She provides a clear understanding that change and making governments responsive to women’s perspectives and concerns depends on being very close to the engines of power and having resources to undertake research, analysis and advocacy both inside and outside government.
Exploring Women-centred Care in Maternity Services Report
This project was undertaken in conjunction with the Royal Women's Hospital and funded by the Council on Quality and Safety in Healthcare in 2005. The project aimed to compare womens' and midwives' understandings of women-centred care in the midwifery-led component of TeamCare in the maternity care program of the Hospital. This report documents: a systematice review on definitions and practices in women-centred and patient-centred care; current understandings and practices of the staff working in the midwifery-led component of the TeamCare program in relation to women-centred care; experiences and perceptions of consumers of women-centred care including their views on important aspects of care and continuity of care; barriers and enablers to this program; and recommendations for strategies to maximise the effectiveness of women-centred care in the midwifery-led TeamCare program.
Facilitating Consumer Participation: Lessons to be Learnt from Breast Health Consumers?
This article contests the notion of ‘training’ as a means to communicate knowledge and skills to consumers. It argues the need to move away from formal notions of training towards an involvement that is facilitated, supported with information and connected to ways that assist participation with confidence. Findings from a study conducted with active breast health consumers include how participants explain their learning needs for participation as different to classical notions of communicating knowledge
The partnership for this study was between the Epworth Hospital and the Endometriosis Association (Vic) Inc. The aim of the study was to discern the information needs of women facing laparoscopy for endometriosis, and to develop an information strategy and pathway that would meet these needs.
The National Maternity Action Plan (NMAP) proposes a strategy for federal and state governments to enable comprehensive implementation of community midwifery services in both urban and regional/rural Australia. This article describes the importance of talking about the provision of maternity care within the context of the health system and illustrates how the present structure hinders many women from getting what they want and need from maternity services. It also outlines how the NMAP will provide a maternity care system able to address these issues.
Indigenous Women's Health Strategy
The strategy, developed by the Australian Women’s Health Network (AWHN) Aboriginal Women’s Talking Circle, seeks to address the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous women’s health.
The AWHN used the Aboriginal Women’s Talking Circle to consult with more than 400 Indigenous women across Australia on health issues, gaps, and barriers to services for the strategy.The strategy’s recommendations include:implementing cultural safety accreditation standards and annual audits for women’s health providers; and establishing a biannual Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women’s health conference.The strategy is designed to supplement existing State and Territory documents which identify priorities and needs.
Informed consent for women whose cases are to be discussed at Breast Cancer Care Multidisciplinary Team meetings.
This article looks at the issue of informing women following a diagnosis with breast cancer and prior to their casebeing discussed by a multidisciplinary team. It reports on an informal Breast Cancer Action Group consultation conducted with women affected by breast cancer about the need for informed consent prior to their cases being discussed and what informed consent means to them. It follows medico–legal concerns expressed by health care professionals that referring their patients’ cases to a multidisciplinary treatment planning meeting could expose the health professionals to medico–legal risk. It is proposed that informed patient consent be obtained from women prior to their case discussion; how this is achieved remains to be addressed. Women consulted by the Breast Cancer Action Group said they did want to be sufficiently informed about their case being discussed but they also wanted such information to be integral to their breast cancer care.
Issues in the Current Abortion Debate
Suggestions raised at federal government level in November 2004 to limit access to abortion through Medicare have the capacity to impact on the quality and equity of women's health. Women's Health Victoria developed this article in response to the continuing demand for factual evidence-based information on abortion. It briefly outlines the current context of abortion with a particular focus on the Victorian situation.
Participation, Empowerment and Effectiveness: The Tall Girls Experience
Tall Girls Inc. is a small self-help consumer health group representing women who, as tall girls, were treated with synthetic oestrogen to stunt their growth. This article describes how the group formed and how the women have been able to publicise the issues in Australia and overseas. Tall Girls has also been involved in a research study looking at the long-term health outcomes of the treatment.
Breastscreen Victoria's Annual Report 2004-2005, 'Pleased to Meet You', is an innovative example of how the concept of consumer participation can be woven through an entire document, using photographs, short profiles and quotes from different members of the Consumer Advisory Committee.
This article was written on behalf of the Maternity Coalition, a national umbrella organisation made up of individuals and support groups committed to advocating for the rights of mothers and for improving maternity care. It discusses how women throughout Australia could be provided with better birth care by adopting a national maternity care framework that is client-focused, particularly at the primary care level rather than one-size-fits-all, is sensitive to women’s individual needs, and provides appropriate services for all on the basis of need rather than ability to pay.
Reproductive Health for Resettling Refugee and Migrant Women?
The negotiation of reproductive rights for refugee and migrant women is complicated by the experiences of displacement and migration. Notions of community, family and authorities, and rules of access to resources, are in constant flux and may differ from the traditional systems that migrant or resettling refugee women are familiar with. This article presents the qualitative findings of a three-year study focusing on the reproductive health of African and Middle Eastern refugee and migrant women resettled in Victoria. The issues discussed include women’s problems of engaging with reproductive health services that they perceive as hostile and unforgiving of cultural differences, their difficulties in accessing family planning services, and the complications of addressing reproductive rights in rapidly evolving power relations within families and communities.
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.
This research report focuses on the experience of rural women with breast cancer and implications for the provision of health services is an example of participatory research. It was designed to explore the effects of breast cancer and breast cancer treatment on rural women. 20 women in the Hume region of Victoria who had been diagnosed and treated for breast cancer were asked to reflect on the effect of breast cancer on their lives, and on the nature and quality of the services they received. They spoke about what was helpful to them and gave their views on how services could be improved.
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’.
Women's Health Victoria is an independent Victorian women's health promotion organisation. Their website includes is a great source of quality information on many topics of women's health through their clearinghouse, which can be searched online.
Women's Health Victoria's Clearinghouse Connector
This electronic resource profiles information resources on specific topics. These topics change regular and have included social connectedness and sexual and reproductive health education.
