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CAPACITY BUILDING IN INTELLECTUAL DISABILITY HEALTH FOR GENERAL PRACTICE

Bridge to Better Health

Join us in revolutionising healthcare for individuals with intellectual disabilities. Our research aims to bridge gaps and foster better health outcomes.

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What is Bridge to Better Health?

The Bridge to Better Health project is dedicated to enhancing the healthcare experience for patients with intellectual disabilities. 

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Why are we doing this?

Preventable Deaths

People with intellectual disability experience a mortality rate of up to 26 years earlier than the general population. This is often due to preventable causes, and barriers to care.

Barriers to Care

Barriers to accessing care include such things as: short consultation times, service eligibility, service usability, communication skills, diagnostic overshadowing and more.

Time Limitations

Since the introduction of an annual health assessment as a MBS item, general practitioners have reported lacking the time required to complete them effectively.

Lack of Education

Nurses and medical staff receive minimal if any education about supporting patients with intellectual disability in their training. Leading to a lack of confidence supporting this population.

How do we plan to do this?

By using a three-armed approach

ACCESS TO A SPECIALIST INTELLECTUAL DISABILITY NURSE

What will this look like?

ACCESS TO EDUCATION MODULES

What will this look like?

ACCESS TO ONLINE RESOURCES

What will this look like?

What we aim to show:

Increase Preventative Health Actions

We hope to show that prevetanable health actions increased in the practices that received our intervention. This means things like hearing checks being completed once noted in a health assessment.

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Decrease Potentially Avoidable Hospitalisations

We aim to decrease the amount of people with intellectual disability that go to the hospital for things that could have been avoided if they were checked at the GP. Things like Pneumonia or nutritional deficiencies.

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Improve the Knowledge and Confidence of Practice Staff

We are hoping to improve the knowledge, confidence and attitudes of health staff towards patients with intellectual disability. We will measure this by getting them to do surveys before and after completing the education.

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Demonstrate Value for Money

We will also be seeing if having practice nurses do more of the health assessment will be cost-effective. We will do this by using QHealth and ABS data to see if expensive procedures have decreased for our participants.

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The Intervention

As a general practitioner or general practice

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As a practice nurse or practice staff

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As a person with intellectual disability or a support person

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Interested in participating? Get in touch here:

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