Author: healthprofessionalradio

Overview:
• According to the Deputy CEO at Suicide Prevention Australia, Kim Borrowdale, that lack of talking about it is one of our main problems.Ms Borrowdale is one of 440 people who have just spent four days talking about suicide at the National Suicide Prevention Conference in Canberra.

• The findings, published in the journal Lancet, include the cost burden of lifestyle diseases on health budgets as well as the cost of premature death relating to physical inactivity. The burden in developing countries was calculated differently because the consequences of lifestyle diseases is often premature death.

• In 2014, the Dental Council of NSW raised concerns about poor hygiene practices at two Sydney dental practices, each operating two clinics. Following a number of assessments, the Dental Council suspended six dentists, including the directors of the clinics. The report found the available evidence to be inconclusive as to whether those patients were infected during invasive procedures at the dental clinics or from other sources.

Overview:
• The prediction has come after the ABC's 7.30 program earlier this week aired footage of a carer at an Adelaide nursing home appearing to try and suffocate an 89-year- old man in his bed. Senator Xenophon said families should have the right to have security cameras in the rooms of relatives in aged care to protect them against abuse.

• Australian patients with rare genetic conditions now have access to world-class technology to get a more accurate diagnosis. Australia is the only place in the world apart from the United States to offer the test, where a patient’s entire genome can be sequenced at once.

• The Federal Government committed $9 million to Western Desert Dialysis (WDD), known as Purple House, in the middle of last year for clinics to be established in central Australia. The Ernabella community had been calling for a permanent renal dialysis unit for 15 years, keen to avoid patients having to go to Port Augusta or Alice Springs for treatment.

Overview:
• New South Wales Health Minister Jillian Skinner has defended her handling of an error in a Sydney hospital that led to the death of a newborn baby and left another with severe disabilities. Ms Skinner said both the Bankstown-Lidcombe Hospital and gas company BOC were responsible for checking the gas line, which administered nitrous oxide instead of oxygen to the babies.

• At present, up to 30 per cent of dementia patients are given the medication to control aggressiveness and agitation. Tiffany Jessop, from the University’s Dementia Collaborative Research Centre, said the key to stopping the use of drugs was knowing more about the patient.

• Crucial opportunities to manage bipolar disorder are being missed because patients are waiting, on average of six years, to disclose their symptoms, a new study has shown. The study’s author Professor Matthew Large said the stigmatism attached to mental illness and limits to access for existing treatments were some of the factors that stopped people getting early treatment.

Overview:
• The New South Wales Government on Sunday announced it was the first state authorised to conduct cultivation research, after the Federal Government in October announced it would legalise the growing of cannabis for medicinal purposes.

• An IVF expert defends the right of parents who want to choose the sex of their third child saying it only affects a small number of families and it is strictly regulated. Professor Michael Chapman, a senior fertility expert with IVF Australia, said the vast majority of people did not want to choose the sex of their children, but a small percentage of families did.

• Researchers used available data to identify places in Victoria and Queensland where hospitalisation rates for treatable and manageable conditions — for instance diabetes and tooth decay — were at least 50 per cent higher than the state average in every year for 10 years.