Author: Jill Thistlethwaite
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Let’s talk about sex(ual) history
Looking back in disbelief at my early years as a GP, I wonder how it was ever possible to have a 10-minute consultation for a first contraceptive pill prescription.
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A little more uncertainty
Uncertainty and not being able to handle uncertainty appropriately have costs for patients and health professionals. Practising in isolation is now uncommon though there are still clinics with a solo health practitioner. Practising within a trusted team may help with uncertainty as discussing patients with colleagues and seeking different points of view draws on a…
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Work and life: balancing or integrating?
Work-life balance or work-life integration? Whose responsibility?
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Opioids, pain and the power of marketing
Fascinating book about the Sackler family, Big Pharma and the opioid crisis
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A welcome vision for Australian primary health care – but more details required.
Globally health services are under pressure through a combination of national and international factors such as, of course, the Covid pandemic, ageing populations, increased prevalence of long-term conditions, lack of sufficient and appropriate healthcare workers for local contexts, rising costs which are not being adequately met, and many more. I have worked in primary care…
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How can I be certain?
Uncertainty: the state of not knowing. Being a health professional: realising you cannot know everything and adapting to the state of uncertainty as appropriate for the context. Uncertainty is a state in which I spent much of my time as a general practitioner. As a medical student my scientific training led to my seeing education as moving…
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‘Interprofessional’ as a marker of quality
Humpty Dumpty, Lewis Carroll’s egg-shaped character, said to Alice when she was through the looking glass that when he uses a word ‘it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less’. There are many words and phrases in health care whose meanings depend on context and have no single agreed definition.…
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I’m looking for a long-term relationship
Finding and sticking with one health professional you can trust is an important part of health care. With the move to a more team-based approach in many health services, is this still possible and what are the implications for long-term relationships? How is the tension between quick access to health care when needed (or wanted) consistent with…
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Is every health care team unique?
‘The patient at the centre of the team’ is a much-used phrase when discussing health care. It derives from the concept of patient-centred care for which there is no consensus or succinct definition. Does being at the centre of a team give the person team membership? In which case there is a unique team with each patient. In…
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Team-based care: who’s on my team?
There are more than 250 different health professions according to one source,[1] though I would be hard-pressed to list that many. I do know that the healthcare workforce is diverse and the professions within it have many different roles and responsibilities. Each person during their lifetime will interact with several of these professions, the number typically increasing with…
Health professional education and practice 