Simple solution increases chances for women

MEDIA RELEASE

8 October 2009

Women’s Health: Simple solution increases chance of early diagnosis for Maori and Pasifika women

Georgina (Georgie) McPherson is New Zealand’s only Nurse Practitioner in Women’s Health. One of her projects at Waitemata District Health Board has made big reductions in the number of newly referred Maori and Pasifika women who do not attend their first colposcopy appointment.

Georgie, along with Pasifika Liaison Nurse Rita Harder and Maori Community Worker Katherine Tipene from Waipareira Health, have been working hard to engage women in the important first assessment that is scheduled after having an abnormal cervical smear.

On a regular basis, Rita and Katherine phone or visit women at home to encourage them to attend their appointment. In some cases, they support women at their appointment and even arrange to pick women up and take them to the clinics to ensure they get the care they need. 

By focusing on making meaningful contact, providing education, supporting with transport and accompanying women to appointments, the number of did-not-attends (DNAs) for Pasifika women has reduced from approx 30% to just 9.8%, and to 14% for Maori. These results will obviously have a positive effect on early diagnosis and treatment of pre-cancerous disease preventing cervical cancer.

The next step for the project is to make the support for attending follow up appointments available to all Maori and Pasifika women using the service.

“We identified the high number of DNAs among Maori and Pasifika women and realised that the flow-on effect can result in delayed treatment and possibly cervical cancer. What we’ve established here in the community is a really practical response to that problem” says Georgie. “It is great to see the decrease in DNAs, simply because women now have additional support”.

Georgie has recently presented the project at the conference of the Australian Society of Colposcopy and Cervical Pathology in Darwin.

ENDS

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