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Biomedical subjects

B Tolchard

Publications and source records attributed to B Tolchard.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

The changing attitudes of health professionals and consumers towards a coordinated care trial--SA HealthPlus.

The national coordinated care trials have been a vehicle for health reform in Australia, driven by escalating health care costs and projections of an ageing population. The first round of trials conducted between 1997 and 1999 set the trials a challenge to reduce financial and system barriers to enable health professionals in all sectors and consumers to develop service delivery models which would give better outcomes for patients within existing resources. As part of a change management strategy, the developers of the SA HealthPlus trial assessed the attitudes of health professionals and consumers involved in designing the projects which made up the larger trial, prior to trial development and twelve months later. This paper reports on the results of the survey and how initial enthusiasm gave way to appropriate anxiety as the complexities of creating a new system of care from reactive to prospective patient centred care planning, became a reality. The survey enabled trial developers to show evidence of acceptability for the new model of care and identify areas of concern and appropriate strategies for the project teams. This type of survey and the issues identified may be of benefit to the second round coordinated care trials and health regions aiming to initiate coordinated care programs.

Attitude to Health↗

Nurse behavioural psychotherapy and pathological gambling: an Australian perspective.

Nurses have been employed as behavioural psychotherapists for over 25 years. The first training in this field was established at The Maudsley Hospital (Marks et al. 1977). Since then there have been a number of courses producing many specialist nurse behavioural psychotherapists (NBTs) (Duggan et al. 1993). Nurse behavioural therapy is taken to mean nurses working as behavioural psychotherapists. This title does not mean they are practising a separate form of therapy from other professionals such as psychologists. In Australia there is no such training, with nurse behavioural psychotherapists working here having trained first in UK. Initially NBTs were trained to treat people with anxiety disorders. Over the past 25 years this emphasis has remained, but many NBTs have gone on to provide help to people with other problems. This paper will demonstrate the practical application of behavioural psychotherapy with problem gamblers, and how specialist trained nurses can provide such treatment. The paper will look briefly at nurse behavioural psychotherapy from its initial inception to its current status in Australia. The outcomes of the treatment programme carried out at Flinders Medical Centre for Problem Gamblers will be discussed with a view to nurses carrying out therapy. Finally, the future of nurse behavioural psychotherapy in Australia and how nurses can apply such skills across a wide range of problems, including gambling, will be reviewed. Aspects of this paper were first presented to the 7th NAGS conference, Adelaide 1996.

Adult↗

Behavioural psychotherapy training for nurses in Australia: a pilot program.

This paper describes a pilot program that examined the feasibility of training for qualified mental health nurses in behavioural psychotherapy in response to the perceived need for improved client access to services. A 6-month course was conducted with four nurses from the in-patient mental health unit at Flinders Medical Centre, South Australia. They received a combination of workshop training and supervised practice by qualified and experienced nurse behavioural psychotherapists and were assessed throughout the period for clinical competency and level of knowledge in the subject. All four nurses completed the training satisfactorily. Each trainee treated four clients who presented with a range of anxiety disorders. The implications for further training of suitably qualified mental health professionals in the area are discussed.

Australia↗

Treatment of Gilles de la Tourette syndrome using behavioural psychotherapy: a single case example.

This paper describes the clinical condition of Gilles de la Tourette syndrome (TS) and outlines some of the causes for the condition and its possible treatments. It describes a single case demonstrating the effectiveness of one type of treatment, namely habit reversal. Finally the implications of the condition's classification as a psychiatric disorder are discussed as is the possibility that other health care professionals may be able to help in the treatment of such cases.

Adult↗