Happy Heart Clinic: Improving children's experiences of regular injections

Aim

The overarching aim is to both reduce and prevent compounding trauma for children and their families. The aim is to increase adherence to injections, and in the long term to prevent recurrence of Acute Rheumatic Fever, ultimately reducing rates of Rheumatic Heart Disease.

Outcomes

Children's increased uptake of needles reduces the danger of recurrence and worsening of their heart condition. Additionally, children and families are experiencing improvements in access to health services through increasing their agency to negotiate with service providers and clinicians. This in turn increases their confidence and sense of empowerment to be involved in their health care.

Background

There is a clear need to earn Aboriginal and Torres Strait and Islander kids’ trust by engaging them more in their health treatment that will enable them to feel like active consumers in the care process.

Discussion

Our novel clinic is currently being evaluated using experienced-base co-design methods. However, we can already calculate that the number of injections that this cohort of patients are receiving has risen. This greatly impacts each child's health journey for their lifespan.

This injection regime is to prevent Rheumatic Heart Disease, an entirely preventable disease that primarily effects children who identify as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander.

Lessons learnt

We have learnt that improving children's and families' experiences in health service care has positive impacts on both staff and consumers. Children's acceptance and understanding of their needles as well as the number of needles received has improved.

Clinician's experiences of child- focused care improves their work satisfaction and confidence in delivering optimal care.

We were surprised at children's ability to show their agency and support their peers.