Document Type

Article

Department

School of Nursing and Midwifery, East Africa

Abstract

Objective: This paper describes the socio-demographic and health-related characteristics of people with chronic disease attending an inter-professional student-assisted clinic in regional Queensland.

Design: A retrospective review of data collected during the first 10 months of operation of the clinic was conducted.

Setting, participants and outcome measures: Data was collected on up to 378 patients during an intake appointment at the Capricornia Allied Health Partner-ship (CAHP) community-based clinic and compared with normative reference groups where available. Socio-demographic characteristics included age, gender and education level; health-related characteristics included body mass index and hospitalizations in the previous 12months; and risk factors included prescribed medications, smoking status and general practitioner-diagnosed medical conditions.

Results: Patients attending the CAHP clinic had a mean number of chronic conditions of 4.9 ⫾ 2.1 per patient, and 97% of patients had multi morbidities. A high level of socioeconomic disadvantage was found in comparison with normative comparison groups based on employment, highest level of schooling completed and the index of social disadvantage. Patients predominantly lived in inner regional areas (76.7%). The most common diagnoses of patients attending the clinic for the first time were hypertension, osteoarthritis, high cholesterol, diabetes and chronic back pain.

Conclusions: The CAHP clinic offers a unique student-assisted service model for inter-professional management of patients who are socioeconomically disadvantaged, have multi-morbid chronic disease and live in regional areas. The description of baseline data in this paper is important to refine clinic services, to guide other chronic disease clinics and to inform future research study designs.

Comments

This work was published before the author joined Aga Khan University.

Publication (Name of Journal)

Australian Journal of Rural Health

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