MNCLHD

MNCLHD

Tuesday, June 27, 2017

Question Builder

The Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care and Healthdirect Australia have jointly launched the Question Builder, a free web-based tool to help people prepare for their medical appointment and make the best use of the time with their doctor.
Question Builder helps people create a list of questions they might like to ask their doctor, prepare for the questions their doctor may ask them, and allows them to print out or email the question list so they can use it in their appointment.  

Link to Question Builder here.

Heart Failure in Australia

The Snapshot of Heart Failure in Australia Report  predicts that by the time 2025 rolls around 650,000 Australians will suffer heart failure, an increase of almost 30 per cent. Research fellow Professor Simon Stewart, director of the Mary MacKillop Institute of Health Research and director of the NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence to Reduce Inequality in Heart Disease, led the research and says this is a conservative estimate. The study is based on our ageing and increasing population and doesn't take into consideration obesity or diabetes. The Federal Government has subsidised the cost of a new drug called Entresto which the makers are calling a “breakthrough heart failure medicine”.
Dr Lei Chen, Sarah Booley, Ashley K Keates, Professor Simon Stewart  (2017)
Snapshot of Heart Failure in Australia. Melbourne, VIC: Mary MacKillop Institute for Health Research.  

Why Do We Continue to Lose Our Nurses?

The image of a nurse has changed from that of a “caring and calm” healthcare professional, to a “caring but stressed” healthcare professional. More than half of the nursing profession feel they are underpaid and overworked, resulting in the likelihood of patient’s needs not being met, significantly increasing. Lengthy hours, quality of working environments, lack of leadership and the ageing population and workforce, can all be seen as influential factors, in which have the potential to leave this profession in a situation of calamity. This recent article looks at the reasons and some possible solutions.

Goodare, Pete. (2017) Literature review: Why do we continue to lose our nurses? Australian Journal of Advanced Nursing, 34(4).  

Smoking Ban in Psychiatric Hospitals

The introduction of a smoking ban in one of the UK’s largest mental health trusts led to a 39% drop in violence, a study has found, despite long held assumptions that banning cigarettes in psychiatric settings would lead to an increase in assaults. Smoking has been a long standing accepted practice in mental health, and mental health needs to look at the lack of evidence that says smoking helps prevent aggression.
Smoking ban in psychiatric hospital led to drop in violent assaults. BMJ 2017; 357 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.j2952 (Published 19 June 2017) 

Burden of cancer in Australia: Australian Burden of Disease Study

Cancer was the greatest cause of health burden in Australia in 2011, accounting for around one-fifth of the total disease burden. This report explores in further detail the burden of cancer in Australia, including cancer burden in Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander people, and by remoteness and socioeconomic group. It also looks at how the cancer burden has changed since 2003, and the potential burden of cancer expected in 2020.
While rates of other cancers are falling or remaining static, liver cancer is the only “top ten” cancer for which rates increased between 2003 and 2011. Liver cancer is a looming health threat in Australia, recent findings from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare’s (AIHW) Burden of Cancer report suggest.  

Burden of cancer in Australia: Australian Burden of Disease Study 2011. Cat. no. BOD 13. AIHW

Wednesday, June 21, 2017

Preventative Health: How Much Does Australia Spend and is it Enough

The report, Preventativehealth: How much does Australia spend and is it enough?, found that Australia compared poorly with OECD peers in terms of spending on prevention, at about $2 billion per year or $89 per capita. Chronic disease is responsible for 83 per cent of all premature deaths in Australia and 66 per cent of the burden of disease, making it our nation’s greatest health challenge.

Preventive health: How much does Australia spend and is it enough? by Hannah Jackson and Alan Shiell / Department of Public Health, La Trobe University and the Australian Prevention Partnership Centre.

Three Ways to Build Resilience

​Sophie Scott is the National Medical Reporter for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. She has written an interesting blog post on resilience; "When life doesn’t go exactly the way you had hoped, what is it that helps some of us to be able to cope better, be resilient or even grow as a person through adversity?" Sophie tells the story of people who have overcome great tragedy in their lives.

In researching resilience, Sophie found that the creator of positive psychology Martin Seligman had found the best way to move past setbacks was to move beyond the three Ps:
Personalisation - the idea you are at fault,
Pervasiveness - the belief that an event will affect all areas of your life,
Permanence - the thought that the effect of the event will be life-long.

Read more on Sophie Scott's blog here:  http://www.sophiescott.com.au/blog 

BAM: Body and Mind app

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) website, BAM!Body and Mind, offers kids information to make healthy lifestyle choices—focusing on the body, diseases, food and nutrition, physical activity, safety, and stress. BAM! serves as a classroom aide for teachers providing them with interactive and fun activities for students that are linked to national education standards. The BAM! site features games and quizzes that are both educational and entertaining and could prove an asset for dieticians, nutritionists and pediatricians.
It is free to download to your iPad, iPhone, or Android device.   

Elder Abuse—A National Legal Response

This new report includes 43 recommendations for law reform in elder abuse. The overall effect will be to safeguard older people from abuse and support their choices and wishes through:
  • improved responses to elder abuse in residential aged care;
  • enhanced employment screening of care workers;
  • greater scrutiny regarding the use of restrictive practices in aged care;
  • building trust and confidence in enduring documents as important advanced planning tools;
  • protecting older people when ‘assets for care’ arrangements go wrong;
  • banks and financial institutions protecting vulnerable customers from abuse;
  • better succession planning across the self-managed superannuation sector;
  • adult safeguarding regimes protecting and supporting at-risk adults.

Elder Abuse—A National Legal Response (ALRC Report 131). Australian Law Reform Commission, 2017.  

Mental health services in Australia / tranche 3, 2017

This latest release updates AIHWs Mental health services in Australia website. The following sections have been updated:
  • Psychiatric disability support services
  • Specialist homelessness services
  • Mental health workforce.
Download report: Mental health services in Australia

AIHW catalogue number WEB 174

Australian Atlas of Healthcare Variation 2017

This second Atlas, released in June 2017, examines four clinical themes: chronic disease and infection – potentially preventable hospitalisations, cardiovascular, women’s health and maternity, and surgical interventions. The Atlas shows rates of use of health care (hospitalisations, prescriptions, surgical procedures) in geographical local areas across Australia.

The Atlas includes the Commission’s recommendations for action across the health system to address variation where this appears to be unwarranted. The Atlas also provides information about hospitalisation rates for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, about the percentage of services funded publicly and privately, and includes analysis by socioeconomic status. 

The Atlas was developed by the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care.

Wednesday, June 14, 2017

PalliAGED App

PalliAGED is a new free online palliative care app funded by the Department of Health and developed by CareSearch. It’s full of tips and guidance on palliative care and will be helpful for older people, along with their families and support workers. PalliAGED collects under one umbrella a wide range of very important research evidence, including:
    • new medications;
    • clinical decision making tools;
    • models of care.
It also features advice on cultural and other considerations, symptoms and treatment decisions, risk analysis, ways to support people and their families and public and consumer experience.

palliAGED Apps with links to iTunes and online app store.  


Wednesday, June 07, 2017

Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

This evidence review aimed to identify current best evidence about the effectiveness and content of programs and practices, in Australia and internationally, aimed at treating children with problem sexual behaviour (aged under 10), harmful sexual behaviour (aged 10–17), and children who have sexually offended (aged 10–17).  
Sexually harmful behaviour is not limited to the sexual abuse of children by adults. It includes sexually problematic and harmful behaviour by other children. While the prevalence of sexually harmful behaviour by children is difficult to establish, emerging and ongoing research indicates that it is a significant problem that represents a substantial proportion of sexual harm to children.

Rapid evidence assessment: Current best evidence in the therapeutic treatment of children with problem or harmful sexual behaviours, and children who have sexually offended.

Professor Aron Shlonsky, Bianca Albers, Dale Tolliday, Dr Sandra Jo Wilson, Jennifer Norvell and Lauren Kissinger, May 2017. ISBN 978-1-925622-15-7 (free to download)



Shared Decision Making in Australia

In 2017 the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care plans to release the second version of the Australian ‘National Safety and Quality Health Services Standards’ and by 2019, all health services will be assessed against these standards for accreditation. The evolution of “Standard Two: Partnering with Consumers” in the 2012 version to the new version in 2017 demonstrates a clear shift towards patients being more actively involved in their own care if that is their preference.
This is a short paper summarising the state of and potential for shared decision making (SDM) in healthcare in Australia. It covers some of the practice and policy developments of recent time, including how national standards encouraging the greater engagement of patient, including the use of SDM, and other levers for uptake. It also describes some of the consumer and academic activity in this area, where a number of Australian-based academics have been instrumental. The paper also identifies a number of challenges, including the clarification of core competencies in SDM, meaningful measures of SDM implementation, certification of patient decision aids or other tools, tools for vulnerable and/or multicultural populations, along with issues of sustainability.

Shared Decision Making in Australia in 2017. (Partizipative Entscheidungsfindung in Australien im Jahr) 2017. Zeitschrift für Evidenz, Fortbildung und Qualität im Gesundheitswesen. available online May 18, 2017   

Implementing and Sustaining Evidence-based Practice in Healthcare Settings

The articles contained in this special virtual edition of Worldviews on Evidence-based Nursing equip you with the best and latest evidence to guide the implementation and sustainability of EBP in healthcare settings. Even though the positive benefits of evidence-based care are well established, healthcare systems still continue to struggle with its implementation and, most importantly, its sustainability.
even though there is high quality evidence to support what works well in many areas it takes years to transfer the findings from published studiesinto real world clinical settings.

Implementing and Sustaining Evidence-based Practice in Healthcare Settings: What Works! Virtual Issue from Worldviews on Evidence-Based Nursing. Published: October 2016
Read the full text free virtual issue here.