Discuss the Extent to Which Continuity of Care for Individual Patient Is Achieved Within the Australian Healthcare System Today

Continuity of Care in Australia Setting

Introduction

Continuity within any context describes a compendium of well-crafted steps required to sustain a result, be it a positive result or a negative one. In the Australian healthcare system, where sustenance ought to be positive, continuity could be described as the sum total of palliative measures put in place to enable sufferers of chronic or life-threatening ailments transition to full-recovery from their hospital beds to their normal lifestyles. Therefore, healthcare continuity is all about the quality of healthcare service delivery over time. There are two models for achieving continuity in the healthcare system - a convention approach and a 'vertical' approach.

Conventional approach says that the system should idealize care continuity in the experience of patient of a 'relationship of continuous caring' with a recognized expert of health care. Vertical approach says that the healthcare provider system should integrate the healthcare providers with the sharing, coordination, and integration of information (Henderson, Andrews, & Hall, 2000). As healthcare needs of patients can now merely hardly be met by a single healthcare provider, healthcare providers should design multi-dimensional continuity care models for accommodating the likelihood of reaching both models at the same time. Continuity of care might, then, be considered from either the provider or patient's perspective.

The Chosen Area of Topic

In this paper, the writer has chosen to discuss the problem of mental healthcare continuity amongst the Australian aboriginal community. Writer has chosen this topic due to the increasing phenomenon of mental illness in general, and in Australian Aboriginal community in particular. Furthermore, the author would like to find out the following:

How do healthcare professionals achieve continuity in the treatment of mental illness?

What are the barriers in achieving the continuity of care and how healthcare professionals overcome those barriers?

In addition, the author would like to expose some of the factors that promote those barriers in the first instance

Literature Review

Currently, a lot of people suffer from mental health issues here in Australia. Mental illness has a significant impact on mental health of Australians population. It is increasingly becoming apparent to them. Australian Bureau of Statistics conducted a survey on wellbeing and mental health of Australian nationals in the year 2007. The survey found that approximately 3.2 million, almost twenty percent of the Australians (between the age of 16 and 85) suffered from mental illness in the 12 months before the survey (Australian Institute of Health, 2012). A study on the injury and disease burden in Australia revealed that mental disorders comprise the major cause of burden of disability. According to the study, this burden accounts for approximately 24% of the total lost in years cause by disability. 45% (7.3 million) people stated a mental disorder for lifetime.

Australian women are more prone to mental illness and experience mental disorder symptoms. According to the study, throughout the last twelve-months men who faced mental disorder were 18% whereas it was 22% for ...