The Australian Commission on
Safety and Quality in Health Care and Healthdirect Australia have jointly
launched the Question Builder, a free web-based tool to help people prepare for
their medical appointment and make the best use of the time with their doctor.
The image of a nurse has changed from that of a “caring and calm” healthcare professional, to a “caring but stressed” healthcare professional. More than half of the nursing profession feel they are underpaid and overworked, resulting in the likelihood of patient’s needs not being met, significantly increasing. Lengthy hours, quality of working environments, lack of leadership and the ageing population and workforce, can all be seen as influential factors, in which have the potential to leave this profession in a situation of calamity. This recent article looks at the reasons and some possible solutions.
The introduction of a smoking ban in one of the UK’s largest mental health trusts led to a 39% drop in violence, a study has found, despite long held assumptions that banning cigarettes in psychiatric settings would lead to an increase in assaults. Smoking has been a long standing accepted practice in mental health, and mental health needs to look at the lack of evidence that says smoking helps prevent aggression.
Cancer was the greatest cause of health burden in Australia in 2011, accounting for around one-fifth of the total disease burden. This report explores in further detail the burden of cancer in Australia, including cancer burden in Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander people, and by remoteness and socioeconomic group. It also looks at how the cancer burden has changed since 2003, and the potential burden of cancer expected in 2020.
The report, Preventativehealth: How much does Australia spend and is it enough?, found that
Australia compared poorly with OECD peers in terms of spending on prevention,
at about $2 billion per year or $89 per capita. Chronic disease is responsible for 83 per cent of all premature deaths in Australia and 66 per cent of the burden of disease, making it our nation’s greatest health challenge.
The Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) website, BAM!Body and Mind, offers kids information to make healthy lifestyle
choices—focusing on the body, diseases, food and nutrition, physical activity,
safety, and stress. BAM! serves as a classroom aide for teachers providing them
with interactive and fun activities for students that are linked to national
education standards. The BAM! site features games and quizzes that are both
educational and entertaining and could prove an asset for dieticians, nutritionists and pediatricians.
The Atlas includes the
Commission’s recommendations for action across the health system to address
variation where this appears to be unwarranted. The Atlas also provides
information about hospitalisation rates for Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander Australians, about the percentage of services funded publicly and
privately, and includes analysis by socioeconomic status. 
This is a short
paper summarising the state of and potential for shared decision making (SDM)
in healthcare in Australia. It covers some of the practice and policy
developments of recent time, including how national standards encouraging the greater
engagement of patient, including the use of SDM, and other levers for uptake.
It also describes some of the consumer and academic activity in this area,
where a number of Australian-based academics have been instrumental. The paper
also identifies a number of challenges, including the clarification of core
competencies in SDM, meaningful measures of SDM implementation, certification
of patient decision aids or other tools, tools for vulnerable and/or
multicultural populations, along with issues of sustainability.
The articles contained in this special virtual edition of Worldviews on Evidence-based Nursing equip you with the best and latest evidence to guide the implementation and sustainability of EBP in healthcare settings. Even though the positive benefits of evidence-based care are well established, healthcare systems still continue to struggle with its implementation and, most importantly, its sustainability.
