Primary Healthcare in Australia Case Study 2022

Running head: NURSING
Primary Healthcare in Australia
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

NURSING
Abstract
Background: Australia is making significant investments in primary
healthcare in the mental health however, the indigenous population
experience significant disadvantages.
Aim: To study the impact and accessibility of the primary mental health
services over the psychological health status of the indigenous population
of Australia.
Design: Systematic review of literature
Method: 10 articles were shortlisted by searching through two
databases CINAHL and PubMed. All papers are published within last 10
years. Keywords were used for the database search.
Results: Poor primary healthcare design for addressing the mental health
of the indigenous population along with lack of trained mental healthcare
nurses and culturally competent healthcare plan.
Conclusion: Indigenous population of Australia have poor level of the
healthcare access.
Keywords: “primary care” “mental heal” “Australia” and “indigenous
population”.
1

NURSING
Introduction
Primary Healthcare in Australia mainly encompasses a large range
of healthcare services and providers across the public and private and
other non-government sectors. The primary healthcare mainly deals with
the healthcare services that require teams of the healthcare professionals
working together in order to provide comprehensive, continuous yet
person-centred care approach (Australian Government Department of
Health, 2020). The majority of the Australian population receive primary
healthcare by employing their primary healthcare professionals (nurses)
and doctors along with the allied healthcare professionals, midwives,
dentists, pharmacists and Aboriginals healthcare professionals. Primary
healthcare is regarded as the frontline of the Australian healthcare
system. The primary healthcare can be provided under home or the
community-based settings. Primary healthcare services in Australia mainly
targets specific healthcare services and this include sexual healthcare,
substance abuse, cardio-vascular diseases, asthma, diabetes , mental
health and obesity and cancer (Australian Government Department of
Health, 2020).
The following paper will target Australian mental healthcare services
under the primary healthcare system and the main target population will
include indigenous population. The indigenous population of Australia
suffer from poor mental health condition post colonization impact. There
are also gap in adequate research in the domain of impact of the primary
2

NURSING
mental health services over the psychological health status of the
indigenous population (Das et al., 2018).
Objective
The objective of the paper will be to study the impact and
accessibility of the primary mental health services over the psychological
health status of the indigenous population of Australia.
Methods
The study will be conducted in a systematic review format.
McGowan et al. (2016) stated that the systematic review is an important
source for the generation of evidence based practice guidelines in nursing
practice. In this paper, systematic review will help in detailed
understanding of the mental healthcares services for the indigenous
population and this will help in bringing a change mental health status for
the indigenous population and bring changing in the service quality of the
Australian primary mental healthcare setup (McGowan et al., 2016)
3