Latest News
Avoiding dehydration – a risk for babies and children in hot weather
With record hot temperatures across the state, our registered practice nurse Kate Tiller advises it’s important to be particularly aware of dehydration. Dehydration happens when your body loses more fluid than it’s been taking in. Kate, who holds qualifications and experience in paediatric nursing, is keen for parents and carers to be aware that infants and children are at greater risk of becoming dehydrated. See Kate’s article and download The Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne fact sheet.
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Measles is serious – and one of the most contagious diseases
Australia has already seen more cases of measles within the first four months of 2019 than it did for the entirety of 2018. It’s one of the most contagious diseases affecting humans, but it’s also preventable, with an effective vaccine that’s widely available.
• Measles is a serious, highly infectious viral illness. It’s spread through the air when an infected person coughs or sneezes. Sometimes even just breathing may be enough to spread the virus.
• It’s highly contagious: if you’re not immune to the virus and you come into contact with someone infected with measles, you have a 90 per cent chance of getting sick.
• A single infected person can typically make between 14–18 other people sick.
• If someone with measles enters a room and coughs, the virus can stay in the air for some time after that person leaves the room—sometimes for up to two hours.
• An infected person is contagious from the first day of symptoms. These typically don’t appear until about 10 days after exposure.
It’s not just the unvaccinated who pose a risk to public health: many people in Australia may be under-vaccinated without realising it.ABC News 9 December 2019: How a past tragedy saw anti-vaxxers help unleash a measles epidemic on Samoa.
More than 63 children in Samoa have died from measles. After a mass vaccination campaign, authorities are hopeful the spread of the highly contagious virus has been contained, but remain on edge. How did it come to this? Full stories: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-09/anatomy-of-an-epidemic:-how-measles-took-hold-of-samoa/11773018
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Smart new phone system to help enhance service
It’s been a long, long wait for the NBN to arrive at our doorstep but now our practice is all hooked up we are able to install the latest phone technology – this significant investment is good news as it’s vastly improved functionality is expected to enhance service and efficiency. We are experiencing a very strong demand for appointments. Our patient services team manage hundreds of calls daily – answering our reception phones can mean we are managing appointment requests or any number of other more demanding scenarios – perhaps a life-threatening emergency or urgent, serious health problem. We sincerely appreciate your polite and respectful requests while our team do their best to provide assistance. The new phone system will be operational from Monday, 4 November 2019.
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Announcing Better Medicines clinics with our new practice pharmacist
We are pleased to announce the appointment of our clinical pharmacist Ms Joanne McMahon to provide medication-related advice to patients at no charge. Jo will work closely with our doctors at our practices in Moruya and Broulee conducting our our new ‘Better Medicines’ clinics – aiming to help patients to improve their use of medicines.
According to the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia (PSA) January 2019 report “Medicine Safety: Take Care” problems with medications can occur at anytime during their use.
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