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General medicine Indigenous outreach registrar training in rural Queensland
Author(s) -
Jauncey Paul,
McKenzie Scott,
Corpus Rohan,
Fong Kwun M,
Walters Darren L
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
medical journal of australia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.904
H-Index - 131
eISSN - 1326-5377
pISSN - 0025-729X
DOI - 10.5694/mja16.00519
Subject(s) - indigenous , outreach , library science , history , medicine , political science , law , ecology , biology , computer science
The trainee was assigned to the Indigenous Cardiac Outreach Program (ICOP) and the Indigenous Respiratory Outreach Care Program. These services provide comprehensive, culturally appropriate outreach throughout remote Queensland and include multidisciplinary clinical teams and an Indigenous project coordinator (IPC). An integral component of the trainee position was its co-location with IPCs, who provided constant cultural mentorship both at the PCH and in the community. In addition, visiting consultants and general physicians with an additional specialty at the PCH delivered clinical supervision. The team attended clinics at 24 different communities throughout Queensland, seeing an average of 23 patients per tour. The 18% of ICOP patients attending the clinic for rheumatic heart disease (RHD) and the 4% of patients attending for congenital heart disease (CHD) show the different spectrum of disease found in these remote communities. These data contrast with the national average of 0.6% of cardiovascular hospitalisations for RHD and 28 cases per 100 000 population for CHD. Other conditions encountered included nonischaemic cardiomyopathies (8% of patients), valvular heart disease in pregnancy (1% of patients), high rates of smoking, poorly controlled asthma and obstructive sleep apnoea.