Latest Posts

The mental health of sick babies in hospital: Risks, vulnerabilities, and the impact of COVID-19

Hospitalisation for treatment of serious illness can place infants, and their families, at risk with respect to their mental health. Trauma responses are common, and optimal infant-parent relationship development may be disrupted. Significant additional environmental and psychosocial burdens were placed on this group in 2020 as a consequence of measures adopted to protect the community from COVID-19.

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The RCH Neuroscience Advanced Clinical Imaging Service (NACIS)

Neuroscience Advanced Clinical Imaging Service (NACIS) is the translational clinical and research program embedded in the Neurosurgery Department at The Royal Children’s Hospital (RCH). Although officially established in January 2020, NACIS emerged from work since 2012 which was supported by a Clinical Paediatric Neurosurgery Research Fellowship from the RCH Foundation.

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A Stepped Care Approach to Developmental Care – Improving intake processes for children referred with a developmental concern

A Stepped Care Approach to Developmental Care is a Royal Children’s Hospital Foundation funded project which aims to ensure that children referred with a developmental concern are seen by the right person in the right place at the right time.  To achieve this a new Allied Health centralised intake team apply a stepped approach that identifies the child’s needs and pathway. 

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Trauma-informed care and developing integrated models of care from early parenting services and health services at all levels

Ms Jacquie O’Brien, is the CEO of Tweddle Child and Family Health Services, a statewide early parenting intervention and prevention health service and public hospital.  Jacquie will be speaking on trauma-informed care and developing integrated models of care with early parenting services. Ms O’Brien will describe, using case studies and experience, how working in an integrated way across health services can lead to better outcomes for all.

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The Hopkins Symposium: Complex Movement Disorders – the Genesis of Contemporary Care

The Complex Movement Disorders program at the Royal Children’s Hospital commenced in 1997 and has evolved since then. It is currently funded by RCH Foundation and the fundraising efforts of A/Prof Andrew Kornberg’s Fly for the Kids event in 2017. The program allows coordinated multidisciplinary assessment and management of children with movement disorders and associated neurodevelopmental comorbidities.

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Hearing services and research at the Melbourne Children’s Campus: From screening to great care beyond the hospital

The WHO’s World Hearing Day theme on 3rd March 2021 is ‘Hearing care for all: screen, rehabilitate, communicate’. The Royal Children’s Hospital is home to the Victorian Infant Hearing Screening Program (VIHSP) that has been delivering world-class universal hearing screening to Victorian babies for over a decade. Beyond screening, the RCH Audiology Clinic provides diagnostic care, and the Caring for Hearing Impaired Children (CHIC) Clinic delivers a multidisciplinary medical service that intersects with external audiology and early intervention services for hearing-impaired children beyond the hospital. Both VIHSP and CHIC are integrated with a childhood hearing loss research program at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute to ensure evidence from research informs delivery of the best clinical care.

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Embedding Clinical Research Into Great Care: Introducing the Clinical Research Incubator

Advances in health and medical research are accelerating our understanding of disease mechanisms, and leading to new preventative interventions, diagnostic tools and novel therapeutic approaches that are transforming clinical care. Hence, there is an increasing need to better embed clinical research into clinical care delivered at the RCH and to support the development of individuals who are fluent in both clinical care and research.

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The Kidney Flagship – applying genomics and cell biology to improve outcomes for children with kidney disease

The Kidney Flagship is an RCH Foundation funded project which aims to reduce the burden of genetic kidney disease on patients and their families by improving diagnosis, treatment and developing new targeted therapies.  In this Grand Rounds we will show how our work has already impacted on the care of children with kidney disease and our plans for the future.

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COVID-19: An Update: What have we learnt over the last 12 months?

Never in the field of health was so much learned by so many in so few months.  This, the opening Grand Round for 2021 will recap the lessons from last year, take stock of where we are in February 2021, describe the complex situation with vaccines, and look to what the year might hold for the pandemic and children in Australia and countries around the world.  Topics will include: Why is COVID-19 less severe in children?  What is the role of schools in transmission and what is the impact of new variants?  Vaccines: who, when and how? The indirect effects of Covid: poverty and malnutrition, measles, loss of education, and child marriage.

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