Should we have a more cohesive child and family health scheme?
As a parent, you are likely to see a range of midwifes, child and family nurses, GPs and child education specialists… it can be hard to know who is the right person to see for any given issue, and often these services are quite fragmented across the sector and the country.
This is the results from a new study that has looked at the current status of child and family health services in Australia.
The study interviewed a range of health professionals and parents to find out what needs to change, both within the industry and across the states and territories.
For example, each state has a different set of guidelines for what standard of education a child and family nurse should obtain, and some GPs don’t even know what a child and family health nurse does, let alone share medical information with them.
Catherine Fowler is the Professor for the Tresillian Chair in Child and Family Health at the University of Technology Sydney. She is one of the authors of the study and I spoke to her earlier. I began by asking her what the differences between the services are.
Image: UW Health on Flickr.
