"There is no argument the healthcare needs to be where the patient is living. But healthcare is one of the few antiquated methods we have of service delivery. In rural and remote areas, patients often travel long and costly distances to get to a town to see a doctor. They may then need to return for tests, and again to be told their test results, and again for referral to a specialist, and then to pick up prescriptions.
Is it surprising that optimal results are not achieved.
What if – instead of investing billions of extra dollars to do more of the same – we spent that money to change a broken system. Because we have the technology.
Let’s equip patients who live in towns without doctors with the know-how and the communications technology to put themselves at the centre of the healthcare model. We can make more use of home-monitoring of patients – blood pressure or glucose levels, for example, which can be transmitted in real time to a GP or specialist.
At the University of New England, we have a SMART Farm program, which monitors soil quality in fields all the way down to the health of a poultry flock. Remotely.
Every town may not have a doctor, but they may have a pharmacist, paramedic or a nurse. Let’s equip those health workers with the capacity to liaise with a GP or specialist in the nearest hospital, to sit with the patient while they have a telemedicine conference to discuss what is wrong.
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If there was ever a problem that could benefit from investment in digital technology, rural health is it.
The Australian Medical Association is pushing the federal government to radically change the way Medicare funds GP visits. It wants patients to enrol with one general practice that would get block funding for their ongoing care. This gets over the entrenched idea that healthcare can be dispensed in 15-minute time slots.
Or even – and here’s the kicker – that healthcare always needs to be dispensed by a doctor.
More doctors in the bush would be wonderful, but let's not continue to make rural health contingent on us being able to get them to live there. If ever it was time to think outside the box, it is now."
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"UNE’s Interprofessional Simulation and Innovation Center is working with Oxford Medical Simulation (OMS) to provide students with an immersive virtual reality platform that will advance their clinical decision making and communication skills. The technology allows nursing students to practice treating patients in a simulated, virtual environment, enhancing skills like clinical reasoning, decision making and patient/team communication. This additional opportunity for structured practice results in increased learner competence and confidence in managing complex care.
“UNE’s Interprofessional Simulation and Innovation Center (ISIC) is committed to providing state of the art experiential learning opportunities to health professional students,” said director of clinical simulation Dawne-Marie Dunbar, MSN/Ed., RN, CNE, CHSE. “With the OMS VR platform, we will be able to increase simulation capabilities that offer students access to complex patient care scenarios while optimizing time, space, and resources.”
Simulation is widely regarded as the most effective way of training health care professionals. Health professions students at UNE already receive state-of-the-art simulation training in the ISIC, practicing their skills with actors and manikins in a realistic clinical setting. But high-fidelity simulation requires significant time and space, and as a result, students may only receive two-to-three simulation experiences per year. With virtual reality simulation, students are now able to practice simulated scenarios as often as needed.
This new virtual reality system provides students with access to libraries of nursing scenarios such as sepsis, pneumonia, heart failure, and meningitis. Students enter the interactive virtual scenario using a VR headset and are greeted by a virtual mentor and their patient/family. Through this experience, learners can examine the patient, ask questions, initiate treatment and provide support and reassurance as they would in actual clinical practice. Once the scenario is complete, the platform produces a comprehensive data analytics report providing the student with detailed feedback. This serves as a debriefing tool to guide reflection as to what went well and what they need to improve on.
Westbrook College of Health Professions Dean Karen Pardue, Ph.D., RN, CNE, ANEF, shares her enthusiasm in launching this new pedagogy. “Virtual reality simulation represents the next frontier in simulation education. Students from a variety of health professions can engage in high acuity clinical scenarios practicing assessment, intervention and communication skills. Virtual reality simulation can be implemented in flexible ways, with individual students to small groups at the same time, thus rendering scalable and impactful experiential education.”
https://www.une.edu/news/2019/une-launches-virtual-reality-program-nursing-education
