Page 2327 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 16 September 1992
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generally designed to cater specifically for adolescents and may inhibit the need for young people to gain control and independence. Thirdly, adolescents have special physical and emotional needs peculiar to their stage of development, and need physical facilities and professional staff sympathetic to those needs.
Fourthly, as well as treatment for illnesses, adolescents need counselling services which cover lifestyle issues, sexuality, emotional difficulties and, in many cases, examination of the long-term consequences of their illnesses. Fifthly, young people need health care providers who are sympathetic to them and sensitive to their developmental needs and the concerns of their parents. Sixthly, there are benefits to be derived from grouping adolescents together. They support each other, receive more appropriate health and medical care, provide a resource for professional teaching, and may stimulate clinical research.
If the medical profession can identify that there are specific characteristics in relation to this group and that there are benefits to be gained by making them a special part of the health system, it makes sense that they be treated as a peer group, not as isolated cases in a large health system. We do not ask women who have had caesarean section deliveries to share a general surgical ward, in recognition of the fact that their peer group is other women who have had babies in the past few days. They are easier to care for as a group because of their commonality; the fact that they form a peer group. The maternity section is located in an area separate from other wards.
Adolescents, too, have special needs and their accommodation, even over a few nights, needs to allow for the lifestyle of their cohort. There is a need for music and television that is appropriate to their age grouping. They need space where they can also be quiet. They need to be able to pursue their studies and to mix with other young people in hospital. These are needs that are partly met by the current arrangements within general wards in the ACT hospital system. By separating young people out, they are then able to interact rather than continuing to be separate from the benefits of peer group support.
We know that at Woden Valley Hospital at the moment various departments and units are moving into temporary locations while their permanent locations are being refurbished. There is also the question of accreditation which the hospital is seeking for 1993. I understand that, for the level five accreditation the paediatric services area is seeking, there is a requirement that the hospital have an adolescent ward. Now is the perfect time to identify a space that can be set aside for an adolescent unit.
If the current concerns are over resources, it is time for the Government to step in and organise the project, as it has had to step in and organise other aspects of the redevelopment project, such as the combining of the two maternity sections from the Woden Valley and Royal Canberra hospital campuses. I am sure that there have been more onerous tasks placed before the Government in the name of hospital redevelopment than the establishment of an adolescent ward from within hospital resources.
It is not as though these adolescents will be a new client group. The young people are already in the hospital system and receiving treatment. The creation of an adolescent unit should not create any new demand. There is also no pressing need to meet the example of Camperdown Children's Hospital adolescent unit. There will be time in the longer term to develop an appropriate
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