Primary Healthcare in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders

Running head: Primary healthcare in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders
1
Primary Healthcare in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders
Student’s Name
University

Primary healthcare in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders
2
Primary Healthcare in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders
Introduction
Primary healthcare is regarded as the first contact that a patient has within the health
system. This means that it relates to the patients who are not admitted to the facility but rather
it’s the care received either outside the facility or by the general practitioner. This type of care is
not limited to the general practitioner but can also be provided by other healthcare professionals
like nurses, midwives, dentists and even Aboriginal health workers who are specifically fitted to
provide such services to the group.
The reason why it is mostly termed as primary healthcare is that it is provided either in
the home or in community-based settings and is not provided in hospitals. This implies that for
primary healthcare to be effective the nurse has to work in partnership with the patient, their
families or the community to develop clinical outcomes that improve the condition of the
affected persons. This system has been highly attributed to increased access to healthcare by
keeping people well and reducing the rate of hospital admissions by supporting the community to
manage the healthcare issues that they face at home. This program does not only relate to simple
conditions but rather includes the management of complex conditions chronic conditions like
diabetes, mental illness, asthma, and even cardiovascular diseases. Thus the services to be
included in primary healthcare include screening, prevention, early intervention, treatment and
management of the conditions.
Findings and discussion
According to the Australian Government Department of Health (2018), primary
healthcare works well if it is adapted and tailored to meet the specific needs of the local

Primary healthcare in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders
3
community that it targets. This means that they can be specifically created to address the gaps in
primary healthcare that exist and affect the people. For example, Aboriginal people have been
described as having many healthcare challenges as compared to the rest of the population. These
people have been described as having a higher incidence of eye and ear disease since they live in
conditions that make it difficult for them to access better healthcare services (DiGiacomo,
Davidson, Abbott, Delaney, Dharmendra, Mcgrath, Delaney & Vincent, 2013). This calls for the
design of primary healthcare outcomes that specifically target them and are done in rural areas to
meet their needs. One health promotion program tailored to meet the needs of the eye surgical
support program that is designed to expedite access to surgery for eye health conditions of the
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients in rural and remote areas who have been on the
high waiting list. Research has shown that the indigenous people experience six times more
blindness and three times vision impairment as compared to the rest of the non-indigenous
population. On the other hand, a similar education program is the care for kid’s ear resources
which provides a wide range of resources to increase the awareness of Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander on the risk factors that relate to ear disease and how they can seek treatment to
prevent ear loss (Care for Kids' Ears, 2018).
RANZCO (2019) has a mission of implementing eye healthcare in Australia with the
commitment of the best education and dedication of an eye health for Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islanders by planning for population-specific modes of delivery, support of outreach
services and at the same time ensuring that the programs are flexible to the local needs of the
people. On the other hand, NACCHO (2016) every year, almost 30,000 Aboriginals and Torres
Strait Islanders require spectacles to correct refractive errors while at the same time 35% of the

Primary healthcare in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders
4
adults have never been examined before and 20% of this population require eyeglasses. This
reflects the lack of uniform access to eye services for the indigenous children which leads to dire
effects in adulthood (Razavi, Burrow, & Trzesinski, 2018). This can be attributed to the fact that
healthcare in Australia is driven by insurance which requires paying to pay. This has made most
of these population members to suffer these challenges and be unable to progress well.
One way that the Australian government has made strides in achieving improved eye and
hearing objective is through the Vision 2020 The Right to Sight Initiative. This project seeks to
ensure that eye health becomes one of the priorities for the Australian government through health
support, promotion and research to achieve the intended objectives (Harfield, Davy, MaAthur,
Munn, Brown & Brown, 2018). Despite the challenges that the Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islanders present, the government is still committed to achieving this objective by all means.
This calls for the application of specific primary healthcare initiatives that target this population.
In several occasions, NACCHO has been effective in delivering the required patient-centred care
since it allows a NACCHO driven health program that ensures the people receive the required
services (Burnett, Morse, Naduvillah, Boudville Taylor & Bilie, 2016). For example in
Queensland, the Wuchopperen Health Service is an example of an Aboriginal Community
controlled health service and through the support of the Queensland government, the people are
able to receive a free pair of spectacles after every two years to solve the problem of eyesight.
Gramenz (2018) the kid’s ears project seeks to ensure that there is adequate knowledge in
the population on how to reduce the effects of otitis media. The resources are produced for early
childhood and community groups, teachers, health professional, and parents. The resources are
uniquely designed to meet the primary healthcare needs of the indigenous people to the gaps in