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Top links
This month's top story - home births and midwifery support
Midwives group calls for action to save home birthing
Home births in jeopardy
Home delivery too hot to touch
What else happened this month?
Aged care funding tied to disaster plan
Residents at 'serious risk' in Vic nursing home
Aged care nursing scholarships available
Voice for Queensland nurses faces tough future
Australia's biggest study on ageing
Click here to find out more about the 45 and Up study
The big issue: Primary health care
 Primary health care continues to be a talking point in the nursing world with ongoing debate raging around the National Primary Health Care Review. RCNA believes that engaging nurses in the development and delivery of primary health care (PHC) strategies is of fundamental importance if PHC in Australia is to become more accessible and appropriately responsive to population needs. Nurses are the predominant players across the PHC sector and at a local level their input must be sought in the management of local or regional service delivery. There is also a specific need to review nursing services and to recognise the potential of strengthening links and promoting integration of nursing-led PHC services.
Currently, fragmentation of nursing-led PHC services is limiting their impact, efficiency and effectiveness. There is a great need to strengthen links and promote the integration of nursing-led PHC services. Strategic planning and investment is required to open lines of communications, identify synergies, and build partnerships, collaboration and information sharing between diverse nursing services. Greater alignment of nursing-led PHC services such as drug and alcohol, mental health, child and maternal health and ante-natal services to name just a few, would result in significant service improvements and efficiencies. Such change would push nursing practice in favourable directions to the benefit of the health of the community, particularly in maintaining continuity of care.
Read RCNA's submission to the National Primary Health Care Review.
Read more on this topic:
Australian General Practice Network submission
ICN position statement: Nurses and Primary Health Care
Department of Health and Ageing Health Topic Quickview: Primary Health Care
Fairness the key to unlocking health - The Australian
National primary health care strategy Q&A
Nurses lead the way in primary health care - Australian Nursing Federation
Policy in nursing
RCNA Says NHHRC Interim Report Falls Short
On 16 February the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission (NHHRC) released its much anticipated Interim Report, A Healthier Future for All Australians. The aim of the report was to present a case for long-term health reform to meet the needs of future generations. The NHHRC identified four strategic reform themes - Taking Responsibility, Connecting Care, Facing Inequities and Driving Quality Performance within which they proposed a series of varied reform directions.
While RCNA agreed with and supported the strategic reform themes outlined in the report, it was strongly felt that the report failed to fundamentally question the existing health care system and that it fell short of providing a blueprint for real reform.
RCNA’s response said the report failed to recongise the potential to better utilise the primary health care workforce and should have proposed options for allowing nurses and other health professionals to operate outside medical practitioner controlled models. The response also called for a redesign of the structures governing access to the MBS and PBS to better harness the skills of advance practice nurses and nurse practitioners, not as doctor substitutes but as unique and autonomous health professionals with potential to improve access to health services and to provide the community with greater choice.
RCNA’s feedback to the NHHRC called for a more drastic reform strategy, with a move away from the traditional models of primary health care toward a truly multidisciplinary model that would allow all health professionals to work to the full extent of their practice.
Read RCNA's response to the NHHRC Interim Report.
Thank you to our members
Thank you to Tracey McDonald FRCNA, Sue McKechnie FRCNA and Donna Watmuff MRCNA for their valuable contributions to the development of RCNA’s submission to the Commonwealth Review of the Existing Supply Arrangements of PBS Medicines in Residential Aged Care Facilities (RACFs) and Private Hospitals on Discussion Paper - Part C - Supply Arrangements of PBS Medicines in Residential Aged Care Facilities.
Opportunities
Call for abstracts open for inaugural RCNA Primary Health Care Conference
 The inaugural RCNA Primary Health Care Conference will take place on 8-10 November 2009 and the call for abstracts is now open. There has never been a more critical time for nurses to come together and discuss the role of the profession in the primary health care setting. RCNA encourages all nurses to be part of this leading edge conference by submitting an abstract for presentation. The theme of the conference is Primary health care: collaboration, integration and reform – a nursing response. Abstracts should relate to the conference title and focus on either research, delivery, education or policy.
Click here to find out more.
NBOCC National survey
National Breast and Ovarian Cancer Centre (NBOCC) is conducting a project on the post-surgical care of women who have had surgery for breast cancer. They are inviting nurses who care for women with breast cancer after surgery and in the month after discharge from hospital to complete a survey. The survey looks at information and support services that nurses deliver in the post-surgical care period. please click here to complete the survey online.
If you would like further information on the survey, please contact Phillipa Hastings at NBOCC on phone (02) 9357 9412.
NBOCC’s revised guide for women with early breast cancer
National Breast and Ovarian Cancer Centre (NBOCC) is pleased to announce the availability of the eagerly anticipated revised version of its guide for women with early breast cancer.
The resource provides information to support women with early breast cancer in making decisions about their treatment and care, as well as advice for family and friends. The guide walks women through every step of their cancer journey and is broken down into five key areas: breast cancer; the facts, making sense of test results, treatment, when treatment is over, and finding support.
To order the Guide for women with early breast cancer online, click here or call 1800 624 973.
CORES Burdekin Community Response to Eliminating Suicide - 1 day suicide intervention course
The CORES program offers community members a free one day training course, giving everyday people the skills to recognise someone who may be contemplating suicide. Strategies are then followed to help the person at risk receive the appropriate help. CORES Burdekin is looking to train as many local people as possible. Inquiries can be directed to Ross Romeo, CORES Burdekin Co-ordinator, below.
email your inquiries here
New Autism website
The Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) website, launched as part of the $190 million Helping Children with Autism package, aims to benefit parents, carers and professionals with information, online resources and interactive functions. Included will be impartial, evidence-based information about ASD and early intervention treatments available to children with ASD.
Click here to visit the website.
National Blood Supply Contingency Plan (NBSCP)
The National Blood Supply Contingency Plan was launched on 6 November 2008 by the Secretary for Health and Ageing the Hon Senator McLucas. The NBSCP is a document outlining the risk management approach taken to assessing the possible problems, governance arrangements and overarching strategies in place to mitigate a blood supply or demand crisis.
Click here for a copy of the NBSCP.
OSSIE Guide to Clinical Handover Improvement
The OSSIE Guide to Clinical Handover Improvement has been developed to assist clinician-leaders and managers to implement solutions and tools for improving clinical handover practices. The Guide outlines the five phases of OSSIE and offers an approach to change management, measurement and the use and development of standardised handover
processes.
The first edition has been developed as a Consultation Edition and focuses on hospital clinical handover. Comments on the Consultation Edition will be invited from April – July 2009 and will inform a second edition, to be released in late 2009. The second edition will also incorporate new chapters on handover in obstetrics, mental health care, inter-hospital transfer and discharge.
Click here to download the OSSIE Guide.
Unsung Hero Award
The Unsung Hero Award is about recognising people making important contributions to the health of their remote, Indigenous or rural community. There are many people who work tirelessly for their rural or remote communities and contribute greatly on issues about which they are passionate. Rural and remote communities are much richer for their contribution, yet we often don’t know who they are.
The purpose of the friends Unsung Hero Award is to recognise these people who have made a significant contribution to the health and wellbeing of their remote, Indigenous or rural community.
Nominations close 17 April 2009.
Click here for further information and entry form.
friends photography and poetry competition
In conjunction with the 10th National Rural Health Conference, Friends of the Alliance is holding an amateur photography and poetry competition to highlight life in rural and remote Australia. Friends are invited to enter by submitting entries about rural people at work or play; capturing the unique feel of life in rural/remote Australia; vibrant rural communities; the advantages of living outside a capital city; description of the beauty and reality of life in rural/remote Australia; healthy rural lifestyles; or any rural or remote theme. First prize in each category will be $500.
Click here for further information and entry form.
Women’s health education research kit
This education kit, available from April 2009, is an all new resource available free to health educators as a tool to support the delivery of up-to-date, evidence-based health education sessions to women in their local community. The kit includes two interactive presentations with the selection of two modules; midlife health and wellbeing and midlife health and menopause, as well supporting notes and frequently asked questions.
To register your interest, email your name and contact details here.
International nursing news
 Nursing and midwifery priority areas of work 2008 - 2009 - WHO
10 facts on the global health workforce crisis - WHO
Awards for excellence in TB and drug-resistant TB work - ICN
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