In her final report from the recent Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists’ annual scientific meeting in Melbourne, Amy Coopes investigates some pressing questions for the specialty.
Coopes covered #RANZCOG19 for the Croakey Conference News Service. See her previous stories here.
Amy Coopes writes:
What should you stop doing? What should you start doing? And what should you continue doing?
These were the pointy questions posed to obstetricians and gynaecologists at a recent specialty conference in Melbourne that was held with the theme Stop. Start. Continue.
As outlined below, the use of this theme at the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists’ annual scientific meeting in Melbourne led to strong and wide-ranging recommendations across a range of fields, from clinical interventions to prevention, public health and patient-centered care.
You can browse the full list, harvested from Twitter, but we’ve selected our top five Stops, Starts and Continues:
STOP
- Talking exclusively about ‘health care’ and only listening to medical experts
- Assuming we know what women want
- Believing we can be good at everything, particularly when it comes to surgery
- Putting certain topics in the too-hard basket or assuming they’re somebody else’s business (including trauma and violence, sexuality and contraception)
- Believing the status quo is good enough.
START
- Asking women what they think and listening to their lived experiences
- Sharing what we know and what we don’t know with patients
- Putting prevention and equity at the heart of our practice
- Talking about health and the social determinants of health
- Difficult conversations around the impact on patients of issues like ‘conscientious objection’ and remuneration models.
CONTINUE
- Shared decision making and asking women and families what matters
- Advocating for, and lobbying governments on, appropriate and affordable services and equity of access
- Recognising the importance of investing time and resources and education/upskilling/competency in serving patient populations that most need your care (whether Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, women using drugs and alcohol, women experiencing trauma and violence, CALD populations or trans patients)
- Holistic, individualised, patient-centred approaches
- Reviewing your outcomes, referring in the best interests of the patient, and striving for optimal outcomes for women and babies.
Read more about these issues in our previous stories.
Also see this 29-page Twitter summary of a “Tweetorial” by Dr Bec Szabo of her presentation with Dr Sarah Janseens on the use of simulation – an excellent example of the use of Twitter for knowledge exchange.
Her conclusion:
We need to stop practising on patients. We need to start building expertise in RANZCOG educators. We need to continue to use simulation and build that into the continuum of our journey as RANZCOG doctors into the future.”
From Twitter
Feedback
Analytics
During the period of Croakey’s coverage of the conference, Symplur analytics show that more than 4,900 tweets were sent using the hashtag by 640 Twitter participants, creating more than 41 million Twitter impressions.
Amy Coopes broadcast eight interviews live on Periscope, with a total 2,624 views as of 14 November. Watch the conference playlist here.
This is our final story from #RANZCOG19 for the Croakey Conference News Service. Bookmark this link for the rest of our stories. An e-publication compiling all of the coverage will be published shortly.