Maternal and Child Health Professional: 

I learn from my clients. It may not be anything related to Maternal and Child Health, it might be just in general conversation, but I often learn about good people to refer to and things like that and I always jot them down or they offer to bring me a card. And you learn sometimes when things work or whether they’ve tried something or whether they’ve been to the paediatrician or they’ve been to some other health care professional and they’ve used some sort of approach to managing their health and it’s worked. That’s what makes the job interesting really, because as you learn new things you use them.

Yes it is changing over the years, it’s probably changed a lot. Different problems arise these days. Once upon a time we spent a lot time with nappy rash, now with the advent of disposable nappies there’s far less nappy rash, you rarely see a child with bad nappy rash, which is great. But now we have sleeping problems because in the past, if they didn’t sleep we just put them on their tummy and gave them a little paddle on the bot and they slept. Whereas now, lying flat on their back, they don’t. So we have sleep schools and all sorts of problems. And educational diets started later, so it’s evolving all the time. We have meetings very often on a Tuesday, we usually have about two a month so we see each other then but those agendas are pretty well set, so as far as conversing with each other or sharing with each other it might be just a few moments before a meeting or a few moments at the end or a few moments at a break in the middle. In the past we used to have regional meetings, this was before amalgamation and I used to really like going to those because you get to speak to people from other municipalities and skill share and pick up ideas and we did lots of fantastic in-service and really innovative stuff. And sort of gone by the board because the pressure now is to pack everything into a day, to account for every moment and there just isn’t time to go to those meetings. 

We have pretty good in-service too, you know and there’s always something of educational interest. Our past experience with clinical supervision hasn’t been positive at all, the manager came to it and very often there was a whole lot of managerial issues discussed. There was no sense that you could speak freely about things that were bothering you, that it might not be used against you. Whereas this first session we had was most encouraging I have to say. It was a real opportunity to share experiences with our colleagues in a much more deeper and meaningful way and I think it will really help team building as well. I think it will be very positive and help create mutual respect and understanding.