Australia's environment and its influences on health

While the Australian geographic environment is essentially benign, we have had a history of imported infectious diseases which requires continual surveillance to avoid recurring in this age of high international mobility. Urbanisation and an ageing population provide what is now a common picture of health care problems found in most Western societies. There is renewed emphasis on environmental health policy making and the development of stronger strategies of health conservation in the workplace. Many of these efforts have to cope with the difficult legislative arrangements relating to Federal and State jurisdictions.

Assessing communication skills of GP registrars: a comparison of patient and GP examiner ratings.

General practice.This article is freely available via Open Access. Click on the ‘Additional Link’ above to access the full-text from the publisher’s site

Barriers to accessing rural paediatric speech pathology services: Health care consumers' perspectives

Objective: An investigation of consumers' perceived barriers to access paediatric speech pathology services. Design: Self-administered, mail-out questionnaire. Setting: Rural and remote New South Wales (NSW). Subjects: Three hundred and twenty-nine members of the NSW branch of the Isolated Children's and Parents' Association. Results: Consumers living in rural and remote areas experience a number of barriers that affected their ability to access speech pathology services. These barriers include the lack, and limited choice, of speech pathologists in rural areas; long distances to travel to access services, expensive travel costs, lack of public transport; poor awareness of speech pathology services; and delays in treatment due to waiting lists. Conclusion: Barriers to access paediatric speech pathology services limit rural and remote consumers' usage of health services, regardless of need, indicating a possible inequity if compared to larger, more accessible urban areas