The Australian Indigenous HealthInfoNet: Your health workforce support resource
Document Type
Other
Publication Title
Aboriginal and Islander Health Worker Journal
Publisher
Aboriginal and Islander Health Worker Journal
School
Kurongkurl Katitjin / Australian Indigenous HealthInfoNet
RAS ID
25356
Abstract
One of the great challenges facing health workers is to stay up to date with the research and other information that informs high quality, evidence based practice. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Workers are like most professionals in the health sector; overburdened, under resourced and time poor. Keeping up to date with the vast amount of available information is becoming increasingly difficult. Choi in 2005, estimated that in the area of biomedicine alone we would need to read 19 original articles a day just to keep up, growing at a rate of 7% per year. If we calculate that to 2015 the number is in excess of 30 a day, a clearly impossible task for even the most dedicated worker who is expected to keep abreast of developments in a wide range of health conditions. And yet, we must keep up in order to maintain best practice and to deliver the positive outcomes the community expects and is entitled to receive. Ann Sanson and her colleagues put it very succinctly when they observed that the gap between what we know and what we do is far greater than the gap between what we know and what we don't know. David Satcher, the former US Surgeon General, went one step further when he stated that 'the gap between what we know and what we do in public health is lethal to Americans, if not the world'. The same undoubtedly applies in Australia. Professor Ian Chubb, Australia's Chief Scientist in 2012, said in relation to medical research 'that there is a gap between basic research and clinical applications, and it is to the detriment of our health care options'. He also highlighted the associated problem of getting all the good science published in the first place with some journals only able to accept 3% of submissions. This is precisely the gap that the Australian Indigenous HealthInfoNet (AIH) was designed and developed to fill in order to support positive outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health...
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Comments
Adams, M., Drew, N., Elwell, M., Harford-Mills, M., Macrae, A., O'Hara...Trzesinski, A. (2016). The Australian Indigenous HealthInfoNet your health workforce support resource. Aboriginal and Islander Health Worker Journal, 40, 36-37. Available here