Context of nursing and primary health care

Running head: Context of nursing and primary health care
Context of nursing and primary health care
Name of the Student
Name of the university
Author’s note

Context of nursing and primary health care1
Question 1
This question will reflect on an incidence of a care service that has been received by an
aboriginal patient and will draw upon a comparison of the services provided by the Primary
health care of Australia.
The primary health care sector in Australia, incorporates a wide range of providers and
facilities in private, civic and the non –government departments. As per my knowledge that I
have gained form the books and government websites. Most of the Australian will receive
primary health care through their GP (Thomas, Wakerman & Humphreys, 2015). The primary
health care system is the backbone of Australia’s health care system. In home services as well as
community based settings like in general practices and other private practices are provided. PHC
services also includes public health, the local government and the non-government settings like
the health services controlled by the aboriginal community are provided (Bourke et al., 2016).
According to Harfield et al., (2018), it can be seen that the Australian government
funded indigenous specific primary health care services are well positioned relatively to the
geographical distribution of the indigenous population of the other GP services. There are many
areas where the aboriginal people have very limited access to primary care services (Duckett &
Willcox, 2015). Further reforms has been made in terms of insurance schemes like the Medical
and Pharmaceutical Benefit Scheme (MBS) for ensuring that the funding reached the Aboriginal
and the Torres Strait Islander that are often not the served by the private practitioners..

Context of nursing and primary health care2
According to some Australian report, it has been found that funding for the Aboriginal people
had increased from about $233 per Indigenous person.
However, in contrast to these findings, I once came across an aboriginal patient in a
rehabilitation care centre from where I had done my placement settings. While the patient was
reflecting on his experiences about the primary health care services. I was surprised to know that,
in spite of working hard to provide accessible care to the Aboriginal patients there is a lack of
services in the remote and the very remotest areas of Queensland and Western Australia.
According to this patients, they have to still travel a long distance for getting access to the
primary care clinic. Although it has been stated that the indigenous PHC clinics should contain
aboriginal health care workers, but the reality is something different (Duckett & Willcox, 2015).
I was surprised to find that the patient did not have any prior knowledge about the PBS scheme
and had to rely on the high priced medicines. The indigenous patients had also admitted that they
often have to face discrimination from the non –indigenous health care workers, like making
racist comments or giving preferences to the white Australians. Although Indigenous people can
claim for specific heath care services through Medicare, but the claim rates have been found to
be 10 % higher than that for the non –indigenous Australians.
Thus it can be said that although a large number of resources and initiatives have
been taken for improving the health and wellbeing of the aboriginal people. There are still many
gaps left in the health care reforms interns of funding, cultural safety and insurance.