Australian journal of primary health
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Mass gatherings such as Schoolies Festivals are often situated in existing communities. Schoolies Festivals are generally unbounded, transient mass gathering events that are situated within various coastal communities around Australia. Mass gatherings are traditionally examined as separate case studies or through using a mass gathering framework to assess patient safety. ⋯ As a primary health care framework, the Ottawa Charter provides researchers and policy makers with the capacity to think 'outside the square' to develop strategies to prevent harm for young people attending such events. In addition the Ottawa Charter is a useful framework as it views the health of whole populations and maintains its relevance today. Through examining the needs of the community through a primary health care framework, the interface between the Schoolies event and the wider community can be examined to address some of the underlying structural factors that contribute to the safety of young people at Schoolies Festivals.
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Comparative Study
How do rural GPs' workloads and work activities differ with community size compared with metropolitan practice?
Rural communities continue to experience shortages of doctors, placing increased work demands on the existing rural medical workforce. This paper investigates patterns of geographical variation in the workload and work activities of GPs by community size. Our data comes from wave 1 of the Medicine in Australia: Balancing Employment and Life longitudinal study, a national study of Australian doctors. ⋯ Our results showed that a GP's total hours worked per week consistently increases as community size decreases, ranging from 38.6 up to 45.6h in small communities, with most differences attributable to work activities of rural GPs in public hospitals. Higher on-call workload is also significantly associated with smaller rural communities, with the likelihood of GPs attending more than one callout per week ranging from 9% for metropolitan GPs up to 48-58% in small rural communities. Our study is the first to separate hours worked into different work activities whilst adjusting for community size and demographics, providing significantly greater insight to the increased hours worked, more diverse activities and significant after-hours demands experienced by current rural GPs.
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Health access behaviours of doctors need to be understood if the profession is to adequately respond to concerns raised about doctors' health. There has been limited investigation of these issues and most qualitative studies have focussed on doctors who have been seriously unwell. This research project was designed to explore doctors' attitudes to health access and the barriers they experience using six independently facilitated focus groups (37 general practitioners) in Brisbane, Australia. ⋯ A framework of patient, provider and profession barrier domains is developed to enable a comparison between the health access barriers of the doctor and those experienced by the general community. The complexity is highlighted as the socio-cultural factors woven through these barrier domains are recognised. The potential for this framework to provide a structure for future interventions to enhance doctors' health access is discussed.
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Health promotion professionals often work with community organisations and voluntary associations, including churches and church-affiliated organisations, to reduce health inequities within communities. How voluntary and church-affiliated organisations form intersectoral relationships and partnerships, and the challenges they face in doing so, has been well researched. However, there is a need to investigate further the extent to which local churches collaborate or form partnerships with other actors, such as government, peak bodies and welfare organisations. ⋯ Interview themes highlight the value to churches of the sharing of expertise and resources, the provision of support to communities, a shared ethos of social justice and the empowerment of vulnerable populations. The findings about the extent to which local churches are involved in partnerships across society, and the extent of public and private funds they draw on to provide resources and assistance to local communities, indicate that churches are now a key player not just in welfare provision but also in health promotion activities. The findings contribute to the understanding of church activities in relation to health promotion and will assist organisations who may be potential partners to consider their collaborative efforts in the health promotion field.
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There is a paucity of research into the perceptions of elderly Australian ethnic minorities towards public health services related to quality use of medicines. Among the six fastest growing ethnic groups in Australia, the Mandarin-speaking Chinese and Vietnamese constitute the largest elderly populations with poor English skills. This paper investigates the relationships of elderly Chinese and Vietnamese migrants with medicines, general practitioners and pharmacists, and how these relationships influence their awareness and attitudes of the home medicines review (HMR) program. ⋯ The Chinese group additionally complained about a lack of support from their general practitioners in relation to their medicine concerns and was adamant that they would prefer to have a HMR without the involvement of their general practitioner. Our results indicate a distinct HMR need but not use among elderly Chinese and Vietnamese eligible patients with poor English skills. Home medicines review service use and perceived medication problems are likely to improve with an increasing availability of bilingual and culturally sensitive health care providers.