Latest Posts

Making sense of the signal and eliminating the noise: Challenges and solutions to identifying deteriorating children on the wards

Pediatric rapid response systems were first described right at RCH Melbourne in a paper published in 2005. The medical emergency team and the activation criteria described in that paper helped launch worldwide efforts to implement rapid response systems to reduce cardiac arrest and mortality, and inspired researchers to pursue efforts to refine and further improve systems to detect deteriorating patients. Now, 11 years after the original description, significant improvements in arrests and mortality have been described worldwide, yet children still experience preventable deterioration outside the ICU at many hospitals.

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Addressing Children’s Health Needs: What’s the Rights Approach?

It has been said that children’s rights must be at the forefront of any health care provider, public health practitioner, advocate or researcher working to make the lives of children better. In this Grand Round, Professor John Tobin will explore what it means to adopt a rights based approach when addressing children’s health needs and the implications of such an approach on service delivery, policy design, advocacy and research concerning children’s health.

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The RCH EMR Project: Just remind me again why we are doing this!

Synopsis At 3am on 30th April RCH will “go-live” with a fully comprehensive Electronic Medical Record. This project has been several years in its planning and implementation phases. It is an expensive undertaking and one which has used a lot of the creative energy of many staff at RCH. The transition from our current way … Continued

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Guts and nerves: The story of the forgotten brain

Beyond the obvious bias of a passionate gastroenterologist, evolution suggests that the gastrointestinal (GI) tract may have been the master organ of the body, with its huge armamentarium of functions and the fact it contains one of the most prolific nerve networks of the body, the so-called Enteric Nervous System or ENS. This Grand Round will address key concepts around the ENS.

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The Neglected Tropical Disease global movement, and the public health case for scabies control

“The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference” (Elie Wiesel). Neglected tropical diseases (“NTDs”) are a group of diverse infectious diseases that afflict the poorest of the poor, and efforts to curb their effects have been hampered by indifference. The NTDs are frequently chronic and debilitating diseases, and contribute to an ongoing cycle of poverty through their negative effects on human health, their economic impact on families and through stigmatisation

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Infant Mental Health – From recognition to community intervention

This presentation will recount the early history of recognizing infant suffering and potentials, the struggles for acceptance of the concepts in psychiatry and paediatrics, as well as a look at the science of this field in the current era, along with emerging strategies for guiding community applications of research.

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Down syndrome: What the paediatrician needs to know

Health care recommendations for children with Down syndrome have undergone several significant changes in recent years and it is important for providers to be aware of the current guidelines. Patient examples illustrating some of the critical issues will be used in the presentation and time for general questions will be provided

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Child Psychiatry: To the evidence and beyond

Whilst it is often assumed that there is little in the way of evidence to guide practice in child psychiatry the truth is somewhat more complex. Our evidence base has in fact developed considerably over the last 20 years and whilst there are still many gaps in our understanding it is now possible to practice evidence based healthcare for many developmental mental health problems that affect both children and adolescents.

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From Syria to Safed: Treatment of Syrian war victims in Israel

In March 2011 the civil war in Syria broke out. To date, there have been over 250,000 deaths and over half the country has been internally or externally displaced. Since Feb 2013 over 2000 severely wounded Syrians have crossed the border into Israel. Most of the children have come to Ziv Hospital in Tzfat in Israel’s far north, where Michael Harari works as a paediatrician. They have posed unique medical, social, emotional and political challenges. Michael will talk of his experience in dealing with these issues, and some of the medical lessons learnt along the way.

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