As part of the University’s graduation season, we recently celebrated the significant achievements of students across the College of Medicine and Public Health for 2018. We are thrilled to announce that, within our Postgraduate Chronic Condition Management program, Ms Eloise Crawshaw was this year’s recipient of the prize for achieving the highest mark in MHSC8112 Perspectives on Chronic Condition Management.
This prize celebrates outstanding understanding of implementation of initiatives that promote improved chronic condition management into practice. Students undertake a range of activities within this topic, exploring change at the micro, meso and macro levels of the healthcare system, and enablers and barriers to system improvement. They then develop of proposal for change within a setting of their choosing.
Eloise excelled in all of these activities. She chose to focus on a change initiative for improving St John’s response to asthma, based on her insights gained from volunteering with St John’s. Eloise said “As a first aid organisation with the mission of improving community and individual resilience, the high rate of asthma deaths and hospitalisations in South Australia is concerning to St John SA.” Eloise mapped out a proposal for implementing follow-up of asthma self-management in patients presenting with acute exacerbations at St John SA community treatment posts using a social influence model of organisational change and The Flinders Program tools. She argued that “Asthma attacks are a reasonably frequent presentation to St John SA treatment posts and patients presenting most commonly have an asthma diagnosis but don’t manage their asthma well or forget to bring their puffer with them”.
Eloise is currently undertaking her 3rd year in the Medical Degree at Flinders University. We wish her well in her future career endeavours and, if Eloise’s ideas and achievements are anything to go by, the future of healthcare is in good hands.