SA Health Awards
Viral Hepatitis Nurses win well-deserved award
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ALHN’s Viral Hepatitis Nurses have deservedly won the Out of Hospital Strategies and Care award at the SA Health Awards for 2018. The citation noted that “the Central Adelaide Local Health Network viral hepatitis nurses have developed innovative models of care to treat patients safely and efficiently in the community, particularly marginalised patients who are unlikely to access mainstream healthcare facilities. The service is delivered through education, diagnostic testing, community clinics, and links with prison health and other community services. As a result, the proportion of patients who started
treatment in the community substantially increased from 2016 to 2018.” Nurse Jeff Stewart explained: “It’s a service that provides a treatment access point for people with hepatitis C, and we do that both here at Port Adelaide, the Queen Elizabeth Hospital and the Royal Adelaide Hospital, and we work with infectious disease teams and hepatology teams to get people into treatment and have scripts written up for them, so they can go to community pharmacies and access treatment. “95% of people who have hepatitis C now are curable if they take the medication, and this service provides a way for those people to access that treatment.”
Nurse Margery Milner elaborated: “It’s opportunistic, it’s also remote, so we see patients where it’s best suited for them. We see people at drug and alcohol services, we do go into two of the prisons in SA. It’s about actually taking our treatment to the person, instead of the person going to the hospital. “It’s really worked well in that we’re now seeing 75% of all people treated on a nurse-led program. Our marginalised communities such as the homeless, people that are still injecting and Aboriginal client numbers have greatly increased. Our goal is to eliminate hepatitis C by 2030 in Australia.” v
Viral Hepatitis Nurses Jeff Stewart (centre) and Margery Milner (right)
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HEPATITIS SA COMMUNITY NEWS 80 • January 2019
