How do general practices respond to a pandemic? Protocol for a prospective qualitative study of six Australian practices.

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed healthcare systems worldwide. Primary care providers have been at the forefront of the pandemic response and have needed to rapidly adjust processes and routines around service delivery. The pandemic provides a unique opportunity to understand how general practices prepare for and respond to public health emergencies.

Improving assessment of child development: Results of a quality improvement intervention in general practice.

Aims: Parents' Evaluation of Developmental Status (PEDS) is a validated tool used to assess child development that has not previously been tested in Australian general practice. We examined the effect of a Quality-Improvement intervention in a single general practice in Melbourne, Australia, that aimed to use this tool to improve the documented assessment of child developmental surveillance during vaccination visits.

Methods: Mixed methods incorporated audits of clinical records of children aged 1-5 years, before and after intervention, written questionnaires and a focus group (informed by the theoretical domains framework and Capability, Opportunity, Motivation-Behaviour (COM-B model)) with clinical and non-clinical staff.

The challenges of trying to increase preventive healthcare for children in general practice: results of a feasibility study.

Background: In Australia, general practice, the linchpin for delivery of preventive health care to large segments of the population, provides child-immunisation and preventive health alongside government services. Despite this, less than half of eligible children complete a Healthy Kids Check (HKC), a preschool preventative health assessment available since 2008. Using a rigorous theoretical process, the barriers that affected delivery and reduced general practitioner and practice nurse motivation to provide HKCs, were addressed.

Barriers and enablers to delivery of the Healthy Kids Check: an analysis informed by the Theoretical Domains Framework and COM-B model.

Background: More than a fifth of Australian children arrive at school developmentally vulnerable. To counteract this, the Healthy Kids Check (HKC), a one-off health assessment aimed at preschool children, was introduced in 2008 into Australian general practice. Delivery of services has, however, remained low.

Parents' decision making and access to preventive healthcare for young children: applying Andersen's Model.

Background And Objective: Implementing preventive health care for young children provides the best chance of improving health and changing a child's life course. In Australia, despite government support for preventive health care, uptake of preventive services for young children is low. Using Andersen's behavioural model of health-care utilization, we aimed to understand how parents conceptualized their children's preventive health care and how this impacted on access to preventive health-care services.

'Can they really identify mental health problems at the age of three?' Parent and practitioner views about screening young children's social and emotional development.

Objective: To report the views of parents, general practitioners and practice nurses on the proposed changes to incorporate social and emotional health checks of three-year-olds into the Healthy Kids Check, a one-off pre-school health assessment delivered through general practice.

Method: Participants were recruited from three socio-culturally diverse urban areas of Melbourne for a qualitative study involving 28 parent interviews and six focus groups with a total of 40 practitioners. Participants discussed child social and emotional development, health-seeking and preventive health care for young children.

The Healthy Kids Check - is it evidence-based?

Objective: To assess whether the components of the Healthy Kids Check (HKC), a preschool screening check recently added to the Australian Government's Enhanced Primary Care Program, are supported by evidence-based guidelines or reviews.

Data Sources: Guideline and MEDLINE databases were searched for guidelines and systematic reviews published between 2000 and 2008 that were relevant to screening, prevention or well-child care in primary health care, and including children of preschool age. Search subjects reflected the HKC components: growth, weight, obesity, vision, hearing, oral health, enuresis, encopresis, allergic disease and food allergies.