Rony Duncan, Murdoch Children's Research Institute
What qualities do you most want your doctor to have? Good medical knowledge? Honesty? Good listening skills? Empathy? You probably want your doctor to have all of these traits – and teenagers are no different…
Nurses are providing many primary care services traditionally performed by doctors.
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With Australia’s population growing, living longer, and experiencing more disease and disability, there’s no doubt demand for health services will increase. But how are we going to pay for it? With this…
The recent rise in the number of GPs could be welcomed as addressing the shortage.
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Monash University demographer Bob Birrell is quoted in today’s Australian newspaper as saying the national doctor shortage is “a myth”. He points out a large recent increase in the number of GPs, a rise…
Revalidation is a mechanism by which doctors can confirm that they are up to date in their particular field and fit to practice.
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The chair of the Medical Board of Australia, Joanna Flynn, has announced that the board will consult with the profession before proposing a new revalidation scheme. Revalidation is a mechanism by which…
Doctors shouldn’t be forced into policing the choices of their patients.
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The New South Wales Supreme Court recently awarded a morbidly obese man $364,372 in damages for developing terminal liver cancer as a consequence of his doctor’s failure to refer him for bariatric (gastric…
Some GPs are reluctant to broach the issue of weight for fear of offending their patients; others aren’t convinced by the evidence.
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Almost two-thirds (62%) of Australian adults and one fifth (21%) of children aged five to nine years are either overweight or obese. The prevalence has increased by 5% in the last decade and is strongly…
Unless you’re up to date with the healthy food guidelines, don’t preach to fat people about what they should eat.
Stocky Bodies (Isaac Brown)
A couple of weeks back I awoke with a swollen and painful knee. I’ve had problem knees since high school and figured that this was just another chapter in the saga. Some days later I was fed up – my knee…
GPs have a greater role to play in screening and treating problem gambling.
AAP
The Greens yesterday released the party’s problem gambling discussion paper. The paper advocates, among other things, for general practitioners to play a greater role in screening and treating problem…
An equal relationship between doctors and nurses working in general practice will mean comprehensive primary health care for patients.
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Doctors and nurses appear to work harmoniously together but this apparently serene state of affairs is actually hiding inequality. Instead of giving nurses the room to shine in their workplace, the traditional…
If your teenage daughter was sexually active and wanted to go on the pill, you’d want to know, right? Well, think back to when you were her age – would you have told your parents? These questions were…
Home help is much more effective than written instructions from a doctor.
The new Victorian Health Plan 2012-22 offers a bleak prognosis: forever rising medical costs, doctors in the wrong places, hospitals overwhelmed. To make matters worse, it claims that patients can’t be…
Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne