We all need this experience in our daily lives, because, aside from just feeling really nice, it helps us to feel anchored within ourselves.

One of the uplifting aspects of the current health crisis, is that despite all the anxiety and panic around us, we are also seeing courage and generosity of spirit.  

We thank our staff, and our clinicians, who come to work because they feel that their contribution is worthwhile, and helpful. 

We also appreciate the efforts that you – our clients/patients, and as parents of our younger patients, are making to keep the mental and physical wellbeing of the family sound.  Our normal health needs also need care during troubled times, and shouldn’t be neglected.

For some, this will mean you don’t come to the clinic if anyone in the family has cold, flu, or chest symptoms, or if anyone is feeling generally unwell – with gastro symptoms, and loss of appetite or enjoyment of food.

For others, this will mean that you do continue to make appointments, and keep them. We will be doing our best to be available to you. We are prepared to bring as much creativity and flexibility as we can to managing a confidential relationship within the current need for social distancing.  Please feel free to talk to your clinician about the options that are available.

The Federal Government is allowing some temporary Telehealth Medicare Items for use if you, or your clinician, is quarantined because of Covid-19. These guidelines are very specific and have to be strictly adhered to. They enable video or phone consultations to be billed against Medicare, even if you don’t live in a rural or remote area.  However, they do not allow a rebate if any gap is charged.  

It is in your best interests to continue to attend appointments wherever possible. Unless you and your clinician know each other really well, video and phone calls are a poor substitute for being together in person. No limitation has been placed on the usual Medicare rebates for face to face interviews, or for Telehealth consultations for people in rural or remote areas.  Any gap you pay continues to contribute to your Family Safety Net threshold. Once reached, your appointments become very affordable indeed, which is important, as mental and emotional well-being go hand in hand with physical well-being.

Now – a bit of advice for managing yourself during the current pandemic of viral anxiety:

• Wash your hands with soap and hot water whenever you have touched another person, or a publicly-used surface (on anything – animal, vegetable, or mineral!). Hand sanitiser will tide you over, but it’s no substitute for a really good wash.

• Help your children, whatever their age or their ability, to learn how to keep their hands and faces clean. If they are too young to take too much responsibility for this on their own, make it a fun and positive experience for them. Stay kind, and use your help as a way of demonstrating the love and care you feel for your children. They’ll always remember you for it. 

• As a rule, children under about 7 years of age, but maybe older, if they are very anxious at present, will need your loving help to be able to keep themselves clean enough, often enough. Don’t rush the time you spend together keeping safe.

• Maintain the specified distance from others outside your household – save one another from sharing unwanted viral travellers.  Maintain extra distance if you have any sickness symptoms, or you think you might have been exposed to some.

Finally, DON’T PANIC!!!!

We live in a time and place of excellent medical care, most people recover well from this virus.

Anxiety is very contagious, and not at all good for you, or your relationships with others. 

Stay close emotionally, even when you are standing nearly 2 metres apart. It’s about how we can be together that will get us all through.

STAY CALM, and TRAVEL HOPEFULLY

Warm wishes to everyone,

The Elizabeth Clinic Team

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The team at the Elizabeth Clinic would like to reassure you that we are committed to the health and safety of all visitors and have put in place several measures as precautions. 

What precautions have we implemented?

• Handwash/soap is available in all bathrooms.
• Hand towels are replaced daily.
• We wash our hands thoroughly between each appointment and will refrain from shaking hands.
• High frequency touch areas such as door handles therapy rooms are cleaned between each session.
• Tissues and bins are available in our waiting area and in therapy rooms.
• Toys and magazines have been put away and our creche is closed until further notice 
• Alcohol based hand sanitizer is available in rooms with surface wipes and disinfectant.
• The high touch areas in the kitchen, reception and bathroom will be cleaned every two hours.

What implications are there in terms of privacy?

In the event that our staff or any of our clients or visitors (as the case may be) contract Covid-19, we may be required to disclose names and contact details of people we have been in contact with to The Australian Health Protection Principal Committee (AHPPC), as well as the nature of our contact. We will protect your privacy in as much as is possible, whilst giving only necessary information.

Our commitment to you

• We will take precautions and regularly review our health and safety procedures in order to protect our practitioners and clients.
• In the event that one of us are ill but fail to meet the criteria for testing, we will remain home for 14 days as advised by the The Australian Health Protection Principal Committee (AHPPC) for Health Care Workers (HCW)
• In the event that any of our team contract Covid-19, they will self-isolate until they are confirmed clear of the virus and offer all sessions online if they are well enough. 
• Please note that a practitioner will not work if they are not well enough.
• In the event that we find out AFTER the fact that a client or colleague has had contact with someone with Covid-19, we will advise you, via email or phone and we will discuss whether in person or online sessions would be appropriate for you.
• We will be as informed as possible and direct you to suitable sources.

Our requests

• We request that you wash your hands thoroughly upon arrival at our clinic.
• We request that you bring and use your own hand-sanitiser if possible.
• We can offer several more isolated waiting room options to our vulnerable patients or you are welcome to wait in your car.
• You may want to bring a clean bed sheet or towel to place over the consult furniture.
• We request that you do not visit the clinic for at least 14 days if you have returned from overseas or interstate even if you do not have any symptoms.  Instead, organise a video session to allow us to continue continuity of care.
• We request that you do not attend your appointment face to face, if you are unwell with any cold, cough or ‘flu like symptoms. If you do attend with any such symptoms, you may be asked to return home.  Please instead organise a video or telephone session.
• If you are experiencing mild symptoms but would like to still attend, we will use reasonable efforts to offer the appointment online. We will ask you to complete a Telehealth Consent form if you have not already.

Session Fee Policy

As per our standard Session Fee Policy, we ask that you make every arrangement to be able to attend your session in person.  

However, if you are unable to attend for whatever reason, we will try to accommodate your session via video or phone.  Regardless if you choose to attend your scheduled sessions, you will be responsible for the session fee.  In these cases, you will not be eligible for a medicare rebate unless you are deemed appropriate for bulkbilling. 

If your practitioner is unable to attend the session for any reason, we will advise you by email or phone at the earliest opportunity. While our practitioners are not immune to contracting Covid-19, they may still be able to offer their services via phone and video.

The government telehealth options are available for some patients.  This will be at the discretion of the individual clinician to decide if this is an option they are prepared to offer.  Face to face sessions are our preference and are better clinically, but the clinician can determine if  the use of these COVID-19 Medicare items is appropriate for them and your clinical care.

Like most businesses, we have been impacted heavily by this and we have staff to pay and a premises to run.  We are doing our best to provide the services that our patients need, but please keep in mind that this is a time of great uncertainty for all and we all need to do our best and be kind to each other.

Please ask to speak to the practice manager or email us at enquiries@elizabethhclinic.com.au if you have any concerns. 

Please follow our Facebook page for current information.https://www.facebook.com/elizabethclinicwa/

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Please contact us to ensure that you can get the support you need – safely and appropriately – 9384 4565 or enquiries@elizabethclinic.com.au.

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School is an environment that provides students the opportunity to experience lots of new information. To be able to learn in a classroom, students need to: ignore the sights and sounds of dozens of other students in the classroom; to listen at length to the teacher talking; to remember instructions; to keep track of personal belongings; to switch attention between the worksheets and the whiteboard; to retrieve previously learnt information from memory stores and apply it to the questions being asked; to manage time efficiently to get everything done; to figure out how to best finish the work assigned; and to do all of this simultaneously. Phew! That’s a lot of conditions just to be able to learn in a classroom!

Sometimes the patterns of strengths and weaknesses in our cognitive processes are a good match to these classroom demands, and students find learning in the classroom environment fairly straightforward. When a student struggles in school, this can indicate a mismatch between a person’s pattern of cognitive strengths and weaknesses and the learning environment. This means that the student’s intelligence isn’t being used to its maximum potential, and it can negatively impact their joy of learning..

For example, a student with a mismatch between their attentional processes and the classroom demands might find that they get distracted by the conversation around them or even just a cool idea or thought, just as the teacher says something crucial. Another student with a mismatch between their working memory processes and the classroom demands might find that they forget the first bit of a very long instruction, or forget where they put their worksheet from last week, or need a scrap bit of paper to write on to work things out.

Okay, so if good grades and intelligence aren’t the same thing, now what? If a student is struggling, one way to help maximise their learning potential and improve their experience of school is to adapt the learning environment to better suit the student’s cognitive strengths and weaknesses. Psychologists can help this process. There are specially trained psychologists who use standardised cognitive assessments to help understand the student’s unique pattern of cognitive strengths and weaknesses, and project how this profile might affect their ability to learn at school. These psychologists use this information to help create strategies to adapt the learning environment in a way that draws on a student’s cognitive strengths.

Good grades and intelligence aren’t the same thing, and there are options to help if a student is struggling at school. If you’re concerned about your child’s academic performance, you may want to discuss with your child’s teacher or doctor if it is appropriate to see a qualified psychologist for a cognitive assessment.

28^thMay 2018 Alexandra Sherriff, Clinical Psychologist Registrar, Elizabeth Clinic.

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Young people who experience anxiety usually find it appears in one of two main forms. Firstly, we consistently experience anxiety around certain events like performance or public speaking. Some of us find it’s more triggered by places such as school or home. The second form is more general, and we find that we experience anxiety in almost every part of our life, no matter what we’re doing or who we’re with. Either form gets in the way of how we think, how we act, and how we feel. It also tends to interrupt the formation of new memories and our access to stored memories (think ‘exams’).

The first thing I remind young people of, is that anxiety is trying to help them. That’s what it’s for. It tries to stop us getting ourselves in danger or feeling unsafe. Sometimes it gets a bit over-protective and decides “the best way to feel safe is if I don’t do anything new at all”. And that’s where it starts getting in the way of life. Because we are all here to try new things, meet new people, and learn about ourselves.

Everyone experiences anxiety a little differently. For some people it’s a pounding heartbeat, sweaty hands or shaking. Others experience a dry mouth, nausea or difficulty thinking straight. If anxiety has been around for a while, it can even lead to periods in which we feel almost entirely out of control.

The good news is that all of this is explainable, and all of it will pass. It’s our body going into “fight or flight mode”, blood rushing around, adrenaline pumping, and a range of chemicals trying to get our body ready. This is very useful when a wild animal is chasing us, but less so when we’re trying to sit still and focus – or worse – trying to sleep.

Best of all, anxiety can be managed quite easily. In the majority of cases it can be sent packing with some techniques,  education and support. We only really get into trouble when we pretend it’s not there. Above all, it’s important to (1) talk about it, (2) learn about it, and (3) find some support. It’s far less daunting after this.

There are so many great (and simple) things to help manage it. Here are three of my favourites: (1) Breathe! Not deep, just slow. 5 seconds in, five seconds out, five times. Do it often,and it’ll help you calm down and gather your thoughts. (2) Exercise. The old ’30 minutes a day’ plan works great for anxiety and mood, and it’ll help you sleep better. (3) Connect more. Talk with friends and family, and be real with them. Don’t fall into the trap of pretending everything’s fine when it’s not.

Seeing a loved one suffering from anxiety and mood difficulties is hard. Parents often feel the struggle almost as much as their child! It’s a great invitation to band together to find a solution, but also to seek support together. The family circle is the best support network out there, and it acts as a safety net for our kids. I find the best outcomes are when parents and young people consider counselling and therapy as a ‘team process.

As the old saying goes, “if you want to go fast, go alone….if you want to go far, go together”.

By Scott Nodwell, Counsellor/Psychotherapist, The Elizabeth Clinic.

www.elizabethclinic.com .au

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Pregnancy is a wonderful and extraordinary thing.  It demonstrates the amazing complexity and dynamism of the human body.  To bring life into the world from the union of an egg and a sperm is incredible.  To carry a little human and provide all the building blocks along the way is beyond impressive – it is nothing short of a miracle.

But having such a miracle takes its toll – especially on that body.  Not to mention breastfeeding, or lifting and carrying 3-25kg over the next two years, or the impact of months and months of broken sleep, half eaten meals and the physiological response to the plunging and surging hormones.  And for some, the act of delivery has taken a toll of its own – no matter what the mode of delivery.

Surely, that body should be allowed to rest and to heal.  The ligaments remain lax for months, the stomach muscles take time to meet back across the midline and suddenly, the neck, back and arms are asked to perform for hours on end – cradling and soothing a baby.

But instead, the bodies of new mums are scrutinised and an ideal is set.  An impossible ideal.  An unhelpful and dangerous ideal.

With time, most bodies will heal on their own.  Some will need some help.  But mostly, it just takes time.  If a bone is broken, it can take months for it to set and months for it to gain strength – no one expects a person with a broken leg to suddenly run a marathon.

Be kind to that amazing body that has done an amazing thing – be it your own body or that of another.  Congratulate new mums, not on their appearance, but on the fact they are a mother and are doing the most important job on earth.

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