Author Archives: pamela

Wadja Family Place in Focus, and what can RCH staff do to support Aboriginal patients and their families

The NAIDOC Week Grand Round will highlight how Wadja Aboriginal Family Place has provided excellence and leadership in health services to Aboriginal Children and their families at the Royal Children’s Hospital. Wadja works collaboratively in partnership in the areas of child health assessments, advocacy, liaison, research, mental health, education, and family support to improve the health and wellbeing of Aboriginal children and young people.  

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Improving services, prevention and outcomes for tuberculosis

Tuberculosis is a major cause of child morbidity and mortality globally. Young children are at particular risk of severe and disseminated disease following exposure to a person with tuberculosis. Public health and clinical services, including in Victoria, focus on early detection and treatment of both disease and infection. There have been recent developments that potentially strengthen and decentralise services for tuberculosis.

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Behavioural Approaches to Pain Management

Pain is described as “an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with, or resembling that associated with, actual or potential tissue damage”.  This definition from IASP guides clinicians to potential prevention and intervention points for a reduction in the experience of pain for our patients. 

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No Filter: Technology-facilitated sexual assault and implications for paediatric practice

Use of the internet and social media is now almost ubiquitous amongst adolescents. Parents express concern about their children’s use of social media and the risk of exposure to both unwanted and sought-after content, especially sexual content. Negotiating the digital world and understanding who their children are communicating with is becoming more difficult for parents.

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The Power of Expectation — 2021 Reddihough Symposium

Sophie Deane is a 20-year-old young woman with some pretty big ideas about what she would like to do with her life. She has just finished school and is keen to get on and find a job, move out of home, travel – and maybe even get married. She would like the chance to tell you more about those hopes and dreams. 

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Focusing on Families

 “Let our families and others who are important to us, be with us to care for us and love us” (Charter on The Rights of Children and Young People in Healthcare Service in Australia, 2017).
Patient and family-centred care has been widely accepted as an ideal way to care for children in hospitals. This was not always the case. Drawing on the RCH Archives collection, interviews with current and past patients, families and nursing staff, we will explore how family-centred care has evolved over time, to the present era where the child and family are at the forefront of our care.

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Knowledge translation and research impact: How can we increase our capacity for improving children’s health?

Too often research evidence fails to inform practice or policy, and opportunities to improve children’s health and wellbeing are lost. The Melbourne Children’s Knowledge Translation and Research Impact Project, funded by the RCH Foundation, seeks to better understand campus KT and impact needs, and has developed and piloted strategies to advance knowledge translation, implementation and research impact.

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The past, present, and future of paediatric neuro-oncology – using medulloblastoma as an example

Medulloblastoma is the most common malignant brain tumour of childhood. Despite multidisciplinary therapies offered by neurosurgery, radiation oncology and paediatric oncology through cooperative group clinical trials, there are significant late effects of therapy, including but not limited to neuroendocrine deficits, neurocognitive impairment and second malignant neoplasms

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