Latest Posts

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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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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Deciding with children – ethically ideal, but not always straightforward

In this interactive and case-based session, the Children’s Bioethics Centre team will introduce the ethical idea of deciding with children, rather than ‘for’ them. We will briefly describe the ethical foundations of this idea, discuss what it means in practice, and why it matters.

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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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