PCD Strategy Evaluation 2007.pdf - NT Health Digital Library ...

ecame the main priority in many people‟s lives, overriding many other concerns, includinghealth.Management of Chronic disease patientsIn both communities a card system is used to record the details of the chronic disease patients.These patients are called in to the clinic for check ups every three months. Although some peopledid attend the clinic voluntarily while we were there for their checkups, it is clear that themajority have to be collected and brought to the clinic. One of the nurses in community Acommented that the success of any screening or recall for checkups depends on “how persuasivethe driver is”.Many of the people we talked to in the clinics were people who diagnosed with a chronic diseaseand had become familiar to the regime of care and check-ups that their condition imposed onthem. It was interesting that people with chronic diseases often considered themselves to behealthier than the general population, because of their regular contact with the clinic (this is alsonoted in Senior 2003).These people were generally favourable towards the idea of check ups-as one woman incommunity A commented:“it‟s good to go to the clinic, they check you out inside”Another woman commented:“I‟m not worried about going to the clinic, the clinic helps you look after yourselfSome of the chronic disease patients become diligent in their own self management. While wewere in the clinic in community A, two elderly women, came in for checkups. One had justreturned from her outstation, and was visiting the clinic as her first priority and the other wasjust about to go out to her outstation and was visiting to ensure that she had enough of hermedication for the period that she would be away.Screening and early detectionAlthough people who had been diagnosed with a chronic condition were generally in favour ofscreening for disease in the community, some people who had less contact with the clinic werehostile to the idea. Some people considered that being screened would become the first in aseries of steps to being diagnosed with a disease, to being removed from the community fortreatment and finally to death and autopsy:Appendix 4: Ethnographic Field Study – Evaluation of the NT Preventable Chronic Disease Strategy 2007 125