Supporting Northern Territory Top End allied health graduates and early career staff by means of an interprofessional graduate program.

Objectives For allied health graduate staff, entry into the workforce can be challenging and complex to navigate. Formal, structured graduate programs in the Northern Territory are limited and are typically discipline specific. Discipline-specific graduate programs focus on clinical and specific skill sets. However, there is a need to support graduates and early career staff within a diverse and large health service by developing and encouraging interprofessional practice, as well as reflective and critical thinking skills. This article outlines a pilot inter-professional allied health graduate program trialled in the Northern Territory Top End, including program development, implementation and outcomes. Methods A formative study design using online pre- and post-program surveys for participants and their line managers was adopted. Results There was significant improvement noted in the graduates' confidence levels of understanding other professional roles after the pilot program. Graduates also reported an improved sense of support and reflective skills moving into their subsequent year of professional practice. Managers of graduates reported improved interprofessional practice and collaboration with other health professionals. Conclusions The pilot program provided a sustainable model of learning and development for early career allied health professionals. Supporting the Top End graduate allied health workforce proved to be an important factor in facilitating interprofessional practice from an early stage, as integrated care and interprofessional practice are crucial to patient treatment. What is known about the topic? Research from within Australia and internationally has demonstrated that preparing allied health professionals for interprofessional practice helped facilitate collaboration and partnerships among different professions. This, in turn, improved quality of patient health care outcomes. Interprofessional education has been documented as an effective means of educating clinicians. What does this paper add? This paper describes how interprofessional learning and education in the form of a structured graduate program affected the perceptions of staff and implementation of interprofessional practice in the Northern Territory (NT). The Top End of the NT is unique in that a large number of allied health professionals work within integrated multidisciplinary teams or hold sole positions within regional settings. This is the first graduate program for NT allied health professionals. What are the implications for practitioners? Allied health professionals are an integral part of a health service and fostering interprofessional practice early on can prepare new employees to collaborate and support each other with an understanding of the roles of other professionals.

Use of the satisfaction with amplification in daily life questionnaire to assess patient satisfaction following remote hearing aid adjustments (telefitting).

BACKGROUND: Hearing loss can affect approximately 15% of the pediatric population and up to 40% of the adult population. The gold standard of treatment for hearing loss is amplification of hearing thresholds by means of a hearing aid instrument. A hearing aid is an electronic device equipped with a topology of only three major components of aggregate cost. The gold standard of hearing aid fittings is face-to-face appointments in hearing aid centers, clinics, or hospitals. Telefitting encompasses the programming and adjustments of hearing aid settings remotely. Fitting hearing aids remotely is a relatively simple procedure, using minimal computer hardware and Internet access. OBJECTIVE: This project aimed to examine the feasibility and outcomes of remote hearing aid adjustments (telefitting) by assessing patient satisfaction via the Portuguese version of the Satisfaction With Amplification in Daily Life (SADL) questionnaire. METHODS: The Brazilian Portuguese version of the SADL was used in this experimental research design. Participants were randomly selected through the Rehabilitation Clinical (Espaco Reouvir) of the Otorhinolaryngology Department Medical School University of Sao Paulo. Of the 8 participants in the study, 5 were female and 3 were male, with a mean age of 71.5 years. The design consisted of two face-to-face sessions performed within 15 working days of each other. The remote assistance took place 15 days later. RESULTS: The average scores from this study are above the mean scores from the original SADL normative data. These indicate a high level of satisfaction in participants who were fitted remotely. CONCLUSIONS: The use of an evaluation questionnaire is a simple yet effective method to objectively assess the success of a remote fitting. Questionnaire outcomes can help hearing stakeholders improve the National Policy on Hearing Health Care in Brazil. The results of this project indicated that patient satisfaction levels of those fitted remotely were comparable to those fitted in the conventional manner, that is, face-to-face.