Essay: GP Practice Assessment In Melbourne, Australia.

Question:

Discuss about the Program Planning and Evaluation in Public Health.

Need assessment is a process to identify the specific needs of the people regarding their health. However, in Australia GP practice or General practice is a common health practice that enables the people to get access to recover their health issues. GP practice includes person-centered approach and coordinated whole person approach to provide care to the community (Maruish, 2017). However, the area of need refers to a location that highlights on the shortage of properly qualified health professionals. This assignment deals with the need assessment process based on the Australian setting such as GP practice. According to the present scenario, of Australia GP practice is growing suburb in Melbourne (Golden et al., 2017). In this area, the people generally depend on the GP practice and there is lack of other practices. As a result, people require more time or extra hours from the general practitioners for their health treatment. This current assignment will highlight on the need assessment based on such particular setting. A SWOT analysis of the GP practice will be carried out in this study. Apart from this, challenges of the need assessment will be addressed in this section.

GP practices are well established in the Melbourne city of Australia however, there are no other medical practices are available. In this context, the specific need it highlights on the extra hours from the GP practitioners. However, due to lack of other medical professionals, people are approaching GP and need more time from them to carry out their treatment process. The basic need is to suitable opening hours in the GP setting and GP practice needs to be open for more hours and shift based GP practice is required (Osofsky et al., 2017). However, different strategies are used to address the needs of the community one of the most important is sharing the ownership for the community health. This strategy enables the people to increase their awareness that health of the people in a community is not only the responsibility of the health agencies but also the responsibility of the public (Llosa et al., 2017). In this need assessment practice, the stakeholders from the different sources are engaged in order to develop a common agenda. However, by sharing the metrics establishment a funded infrastructure are the main actions of such need assessment strategy. This need assessment is beneficial to minimize the pressure over the GP in Australia.

SWOT analysis

Defining the community is another type of need assessment strategy. However, a panel is involved in this strategy that identifies the key factors of the issues in different health settings (Lucchini et al., 2017). On the other hand, this need assessment process also determines the variation of the expectations of the different stakeholders. Panelists are involved in developing the standard of the local health agencies in order to leverage the poor and limited resources. Challenges for the community health agencies are defined by this need assessment process. However, the panelists insist the global approach to carrying out the need assessment in both rural and the urban areas. However, in order to improve the GP practice, this need assessment is helpful.

Engagement of the community is another need assessment strategy that allows the panelists to identify the specific need areas of the community (De Champlain et al., 2017). The outcomes of the meaningful engagement of the community can be assessed in this need assessment process. However, in the present context, there is a huge demand of the GP in Melbourne. Hence, such type of need assessment highlights on the engagement of the diverse community stakeholders in order to maximize the health improvement process of the community. This is beneficial to decrease the demand of GP in this area.

Collection of the data and analysis of the data is a crucial need assessment strategy. This allows the individuals to identify the challenges and the opportunities of the stakeholders and its analysis (Hay et al., 2017). However, this need assessment process enables the panelists to provide their concentration of the unmet needs of the people on the sub-country level. However, data collection and analysis is beneficial to get authentic data regarding the needs and challenges related to such needs by collecting feedbacks from the stakeholders. However, engagement of the community stakeholders is important for the data collection process, as via this process the health disparities will be identified.

According to the present need area, data collection and analysis will be appropriate strategy to assess the needs. However, in the Melbourne of Australia, the entire people of the community depend on the GP practice due to lack of other practices. For this reason, more hours of the GP practice is required. Hence, to identify the challenges and the feedbacks from the community stakeholders regarding such specific needs data collection and data analysis is the effective need assessment strategy. However, through the data collection and the data analysis process the proper need of the people can be identified (Badrick et al., 2017).

Need Assessment Strategies

Need assessment is a practice includes the survey method to get the feedbacks from the stakeholders regarding the health care issues (Dutton et al., 2017). In order to assess the need online survey via mobile is an effective way to collect data based on the feedbacks of the stakeholders. However, in the present context, the community people of Melbourne need more hours for the treatment of their health from the GP as there are no other suitable medical practices. In order to collect the data, it is crucial to collect feedbacks from the GP as well as the community stakeholders. However, one of the major challenges is the less interest of the people that affect the survey process while collecting the feedbacks. Some stakeholders are not interested to participate in the survey. People are disengaged in this process while engagement of the community people in the data collection process is mandatory (Webster, Castellano & Onuma, 2017). Apart from this, it will be difficult to get authentic feedbacks from the stakeholders and the GP are also less interested to participate in the survey due to their hectic working schedule. On the other hand, ethical challenges often occur during this need assessment process, as no personal question should not be asked to the participants that can affect their emotion. Therefore, during the data collection process in the survey participants should not be forced to participate in this need assessment process. These major ethical challenges usually occur during the need assessment.

Framing a legitimate and credible framework during the data collection is a big challenge (Halcomb et al., 2017). In the context of GP practice, it is necessary to establish a proper framework during the conduction of survey. However, it has been received that the GP is not interested to work in a shift that is a big issue of the community healthcare in Melbourne. On the other hand, challenges occur during the assessment of the process, which is a part of the need assessment process as it highlights on the current state of the natural world. Hence, such challenges during the need assessment will be addressed by the encouraging the community stakeholders to participate in the survey method. This will be beneficial to identify the major challenges regarding the need assessment process.

Strength

Presence of many GP in the community healthcare is the big strength of the GP practice in the suburb population in Australia (Mitchell et al., 2017). However, the large number of GP in the healthcare system increases the availability of the GP practice in this certain community. In the suburb of Melbourne, the GP practice is a growing medical profession hence, an involvement of the more GP in this context will be helpful to address the health issues. On the other hand, the presence of special expertise in the GP practice is the strength of such practice that enables them to cure the health issues of the community.

Challenges of Need Assessment

Weakness

The working hour of GP is not suitable for the working population that is a major weakness of such practice in the context of the Melbourne community in Australia (Lane et al., 2017). However, GP is not available for 24 hours in this community that increase the waiting list. This is due to the lack of other medical practices in this particular suburb. People have to depend on only the GP practice for their medical treatment. This weakness affects the efficiency of the GP practice.      

Opportunities

The main opportunity in the present context of GP practice is to establish shift based GP practice and to maximize the opening hour. However, in order retain the patients it is important to understand their demand (Britt & Miller, 2017). In the context of the suburb in Melbourne people are seeking for more opening hours in GP practice, which allows such practitioners to give the extra hour for the treatment of the people and take shifting duty to enhance the availability of the GP practice in this particular community.

Threats

Lack of suitable opening schedule in the GP practice of the suburb highlights a threat for such profession. However, this leads the population of such area to go for other healthcare where more GP are available (Hay et al., 2017). This hampers the GP practice of such particular community in Australia. However, in the future, this particular threat in the GP practice may affect the service of the GP in this area as people will search for the suitable opening hours in the GP practice. This ensures the future threat for the GP practice.

According to the present scenario, of the suburb of Melbourne, it has been observed that the extra opening hour or the shifting work of the GP is the exact need of the community people in this particular area. However, due to the absence of other medical practices, GP practice is one and only solution for this community to get healthcare. Hence, it is important to design a program for the GP practice that will allow them to take shifting duty and maximize the opening hours for the community care (Halcomb, 2017). However, the working population is facing the issues relate to the working schedule of GP as they are not able to access the care practice due to their work. Children, working women, and working men should be the prior area for the GP practice (McInnes et al., 2017).

Children are the sensitive areas of the population, which need more health care form the health professionals (Laurence & Karnon, 2017). In this particular suburb, the limited hour of the GP practice resists the working people to access this care service for their children as well as for themselves. Hence, shifting working hour will enable the GP to increase their availability and the working people will able to access the care service after their working schedule. Therefore, the shifting duty will allow the GP to be present 24 hours in the care service and it also gives them rest during their work. For this purpose, more GP is required, which will maximize the opening hour and availability of the GP.

Conclusion

The entire piece of the study reveals the major issues regarding the extra hour of GP practice in the suburb in Melbourne. However, the working population of such area has been facing issues related to their care process. Extra opening hour for the GP practice is the main need of the care service of such community. According to the SWOT of the GP practice, such specific need may bring an opportunity for such practice to maximize the working hours of GP by shifting duty. However, the data collection and the analysis is the vital need assessment process for this particular context. Therefore, people do not show interest in taking part in the survey that is a big challenge of the need assessment process. Apart from this, the GP is not interested to take shifting duty, which needs to be mitigated by establishing a proper design program.

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