School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne, Victoria.
Faculty of Health Sciences, Curtin University, Western Australia.
Aust N Z J Public Health. 2022 Aug;46(4):527-532. doi: 10.1111/1753-6405.13266. Epub 2022 Jun 9.
To explore junior doctors' attitudes towards and experiences of health advocacy practice and teaching in Australia.
Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 junior doctors across Australia. Data were thematically analysed.
Three themes were identified: i) participants inconsistently understood and practised health advocacy, with many failing to conduct any advocacy work; ii) distinct factors motivated and enabled participants to undertake health advocacy; however, these were largely unrelated to any formal medical education; iii) the current medical workplace and education system is non-conducive to health advocacy practice given the numerous barriers faced by junior doctors when engaging with health advocacy.
Health advocacy is generally poorly taught, weakly understood, and rarely performed despite being one of the four core graduate competencies of the Australian Medical Council (AMC). The AMC must clearly define health advocacy and its scope in their outcome statements, and this must be translated into medical education curricula and advocacy opportunities in the workplace.
Doctors are well-placed to act as public health advocates, yet they are denied the encouragement and training to do so. With the growing burden of complex and sensitive public health issues, junior doctors should be trained and encouraged in health advocacy.
探索澳大利亚初级医生对健康倡导实践和教学的态度和经验。
对澳大利亚各地的 15 名初级医生进行了半结构化访谈。对数据进行了主题分析。
确定了三个主题：i）参与者对健康倡导的理解和实践不一致，许多人没有进行任何倡导工作；ii）有明确的因素促使和使参与者能够进行健康倡导；然而，这些因素与任何正规的医学教育都没有太大关系；iii）目前的医疗工作场所和教育系统不利于健康倡导实践，因为初级医生在参与健康倡导时面临着众多障碍。
尽管健康倡导是澳大利亚医学委员会（AMC）四项核心研究生能力之一，但它的教学普遍较差，理解薄弱，很少实施。AMC 必须在其成果声明中明确界定健康倡导及其范围，并将其转化为医学教育课程和工作场所的倡导机会。
医生是担任公共卫生倡导的合适人选，但他们被剥夺了这样做的鼓励和培训。随着复杂和敏感的公共卫生问题负担的增加，应该对初级医生进行健康倡导方面的培训和鼓励。
