Ensure that your practice displays a welcoming environment for aboriginal patients
For example make sure you have a couple of Aboriginal posters or paintings on the walls and that you have a stock of Aboriginal health literature available. The following list will help to get you started:
- Aboriginal lifescripts resources
- Live strong and healthy resources for women
- Dept. of Health and ageing resources
- Healthy eating poster
Where to find the health check templates
If you practice uses Medical Director, the Aboriginal Health Check is built into the software. You will need to ensure that the patient is identified as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander in the patient details section of MD. Then simply click on assessment and the check becomes available in the drop down list.
Alternatively if you would prefer to conduct the checks using a paper proforma - samples are available below:
- Child Health Check (0-14 years)
- Adult Health Check (15-54 years)
- Older person Health Check ( over 55)
Make sure that your practice is collecting and recording Aboriginal status
You need to ensure that your practice is collecting and recording aboriginal status both inside and outside the consulting room. Most practices have a cultural background question on their patient registration form but this information does not always get recorded in the clinical software. If you feel that this is the case in your practice perhaps all clinicians need to be reminded to routinely ask a patient if nothing is recorded.
Know who your Aboriginal patients are
Once you are confident that the practice has been collecting and recording Aboriginal status, do a search and print a list. Perhaps you might want to consider starting to send letters to the parents of young children encouraging them to bring their child in for a health check and opportunistically encouraging the parents to book an appointment for a health check themselves whilst they are there.
Let your Aboriginal patients know why you want to conduct the health check and that you would like to see them regularly
The Aboriginal health check is designed to try to keep the Aboriginal population healthy through prevention, screening and early detection/intervention of health issues. This can be a strange concept in a culture where you would not expect to see a doctor unless you are sick. Once you have built up some trust and are discussing the health check, let them know that you would like to conduct a similar check every year (biannually for the 15-54 year age group) - then it won't be a surprise and you are less likely to get resistance if the reason for the annual check has been communicated.
Further information
If you feel you would like more information before getting started the Australian Indigenous Healthinfo site has some great disease specific information and resources.
Take action now!
There is no alternative to action so look at ways you can implement the health checks into your practice today.