Welcome
Welcome to the 9th issue of the Clinicians Health Channel Newsletter. This issue’s focus is on – “Maternity and neonates”. The Australian Bureau of Statistics reports that there were 311,104 births registered in Australia in 2016 and of these, 82,892 babies were born in Victoria. Three-quarters of these births are in the public system. The public maternity service system in Victoria includes metropolitan, regional and rural hospitals, as well as emergency retrieval and referral services. A few private hospitals provide maternity and special care nursery services for low- to moderate-complexity cases.
Types of care in Victoria, Newborn care in Victoria, Emergency referrals.
The Victorian Maternity and Newborn Clinical Network (VMNCN) – a government initiative, promotes collaboration between maternity and newborn care providers and helps services to identify local strategies when implementing state-wide clinical practice guidelines.
About the Victorian Maternity and Newborn Clinic Network
The Clinicians Health Channel portal provides a range of online resources relevant to maternity and neonatal care, to support health staff in their provision of evidence-based care to pregnant women, mothers, babies and their families and communities.
Some of the important resources on maternity and neonatal care are listed below:
-
- RWH Clinical Practice Guidelines
- The Women’s Pregnancy and Breast Feeding Medicine Guide
- Therapeutic Guidelines (eTG Complete)
- Natural Medicines (Complementary Medications, Foods & Therapies)
- BMJ Best Practice
- Royal Children’s Hospital Clinical Practice Guidelines
- Neonatal e handbook
- AMH Children Dosing Companion
- Literature search tips
RWH Clinical Practice Guidelines
This guideline provides the best clinical practice based on thorough evaluation of the evidence and covers an extensive range of services to support women with some of their biggest health concerns like – complex pregnancy, infertility, endometriosis, chronic pelvic pain, heavy menstrual bleeding, menopause, sexual health and women’s cancers. These guidelines support clinician and patient decisions about the appropriate health care for specific clinical circumstances.
The Women’s Pregnancy and Breast Feeding Medicine Guide
This guide includes:
- Practical recommendations for using medicines in the first, second and third trimesters of pregnancy and during breastfeeding.
- Therapeutic groups includes summarised information and it provides guidance about treatment options for specific medical conditions during pregnancy and breastfeeding.
- Medicines section includes quick access to over 900 individual medicine monographs that have been reviewed using a strict evidence-based editorial process focusing on providing reliable, practical and unbiased referenced information to assist healthcare professionals in their decision-making process. The content is fully searchable and contains an A-Z listing of drugs by generic name.
- Highlights provides a quick summary of any new additions or changes to the Women’s PBMG. This may include updates about new or existing medicine monographs and therapeutic groups.
- This resource includes many factsheets related to all women’s health topics and are available in many languages for convenience of patients with different ethnicities and cultural backgrounds.
Therapeutic Guidelines (eTG Complete)
Another important resource which provides a quick link to find about the safe use of drugs during pregnancy and breastfeeding.
Natural Medicines (Complementary Medications, Foods & Therapies)
This resource is often used to find safety information on – dietary supplements, natural medicines, and complementary alternative and integrative therapies for Pregnancy and lactation information.
Another important clinical decision support tool which provides quick, and easy-to-use answers to clinical questions is available through the CHC portal.
To know about a disease or condition related to women’s health, select the speciality –
Obstetrics and gynaecology or from the Search bar– search for disease, treatment, or symptoms.
In this resource contents are organised in a structured way to help clinicians with diagnosis, treatment and clinical practice guidelines. Including:
- A Summary section which provides an overview of disease, key diagnostic factors, risk factors, diagnostic investigations, and treatment algorithms.
- Integrated links to Cochrane Clinical Answers.
- Provides access to diagnostic guidelines, and management guidelines followed in other countries viz. Europe, North America, and Oceania for relevant conditions.
- Links to key articles and reference articles for additional information on clinical evidence associated with relevant disease.
- Animated and procedural videos are also included with relevant condition.
Royal Children’s Hospital Clinical Practice Guidelines
This resource provides quality, up-to-date evidence based information for the emergency and/or acute management of paediatric patients.
It provides a structured approach to the clinical management of conditions regularly encountered by health professionals caring for newborns. There are guidelines for more than 90 newborn conditions that may present during the early newborn period.
This evidence-based dosing guide is widely used for prescribing and administering medicines to children from birth to 18 years. This includes – dosing information (by indication, age group) to assist health care professionals. It covers nearly 400 drug monographs including over 90% of PBS paediatric prescribing in Australia.
Changes to early childhood vaccinations were made from 1st July 2018 under – National Immunisation Schedule. National Immunization Schedule Changes – 1 July 2018.
Elsevier publisher has published a guide for conducting a successful literature search: a researcher’s guide to tools, terms and techniques. Download the guide in PDF format
Training: For complete list of training events check out at CHC Knowledge Hub. To request training at your location please contact the Education Manager.
Feedback: We’d love to hear from you. Do you want to receive our newsletters directly to your inbox? Subscribe here.
