Abstract
Background: Tairáwhiti's high incidence of rheumatic fever results in a significant caseload of patients requiring secondary penicillin prophylaxis. Public Health Nurses (PHNs) manage the majority of these clients with the support of a Medical Officer of Health and DHB Cardiac services. Service delivery is rarely straight forward and for patients, many of whom are already marginalised the road to an equitable outcome is convoluted and has many obstacles. Our aim as a service is that, whilst we may have the highest number of patients proportionately our goal is to have the lowest fail rate. We have applied an equity lens to our service with our focus on those with least access and committed to doing ‘whatever it takes’ to keep the whanau/families safe and engaged with at least one provider while they receive prophylaxis. Since January 2009 64 notifications of first episode rheumatic fever were made in our region. Around 40 patients are under PHN care in the urban area and Rural Health Nurses (RHN) from the Western Rural and East Coast regions have a case load of around 10 patients each. To our knowledge (because at least one of those clients has left the country) there have been no notifications of recurrence of rheumatic fever in the patients cared for in this time. This paper will describe the complexities faced by families/whanau which can be barriers to accessing the service and ways of supporting whanau/families to work around those barriers and still achieve a good outcome.
Published Version (
Free)
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call