AMSA 2023 Internship Guide

NETWORK 3:
CONCORD,
CANTERBURY AND
BROKEN HILL
CANTERBURY HOSPITAL
Canterbury Hospital is an acute general metropolitan district hospital situated 12
km south of Concord Hospital and 15 km SW of the GPO. It is part of the Sydney
Local Health District, which comprises Balmain, Canterbury, Concord, Concord
Centre for Mental Health, Royal Prince Alfred and the Sydney Dental Hospitals.
Canterbury Hospital is a 215-bed metropolitan acute general hospital. Opening in
1929 with 28 beds, it underwent redevelopment in 1998 and its 200 beds covers the
broad scope of Emergency Medicine, General Medicine, ENT Surgery, Urology,
Orthopaedics, Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Paediatrics, Anaesthetics, High
Dependency, Psychiatry, Drug and Alcohol, Aged Care and Rehabilitation and
some outpatient clinics. It is supported by a Hospital in the Home service. Despite
its size, Canterbury Hospital plays an integral role within the local community in the
provision of acute care medicine, with its Emergency Department attending to
over 46,000 presentations, where 25% are paediatric presentations. Canterbury
Hospital plays a significant role in the delivery of maternal services, with a
significantly higher fertility rate than NSW. However, women within its catchment
tend to present later for antenatal care and together with a lower level of
vaccination, suggests there is an overall poorer maternal health profile.
Canterbury Hospital caters for a local population of 220,000 people. The Canterbury
area is home to a culturally and linguistically diverse community. Just under half
(48%) of Canterbury residents were born overseas and just under half (47%)
reported Chinese, Lebanese or Greek ancestry. Many residents of the Canterbury
community have arrived in Australia relatively recently. Just fewer than 67% of
Canterbury residents do not speak English at home which is almost three times
higher than the NSW average (22%). The predominant languages spoken are
Arabic, Greek, Mandarin, Bengali, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Urdu, Italian, Indonesian,
Korean and Nepali. On average, around one third (33%) of Mandarin, Korean,
Cantonese and Vietnamese speakers do not speak English well or at all. The
majority of humanitarian arrivals that have settled in Sydney Local Health District,
have done so in the Canterbury area. Most arrived from Afghanistan, although a
significant number of Burmese and Rohingyan refugees have also settled in the
area. Humanitarian arrivals often have complex health problems related to either
their prior limited access to healthcare or their individual experiences of
persecution or trauma. Aboriginal people make up 1.1% of the district’s population,
compared with 2.9% of the state’s population.