Projects

PARTY Project

Helen Cahill contributed to the Primary Care Prevention, Access and Risk Taking in Young People Project (PARTY) that is based in the Department of General Practice at the University of Melbourne. The Principal Investigator, Dr Lena Sanci, is leading research into how general practitioners and nurses can best help young people who may be taking risks with their health or dealing with problems related to social or mental health.

A key element of the research project is to train doctors, nurses and reception staff to communicate well with young people and to look at ways to make their medical practice ‘youth-friendly’. To that end the PARTY Research Team provides training workshops for doctors, nurses, receptionists and practice managers, all of whom interact with young people in various capacities, when they visit a practice. Helen Cahill leads this training, involving school students as co-teachers and using interactive role-plays as the key learning tool. The drama students (from Princes Hill Secondary College) play an important role in educating the general practice staff to provide a more ‘youth-friendly’ approach by working as actors in the role-play as ‘patients’. They learn characters to play and then give advice about what they think would help those characters. They are assisted in this work by their drama teachers, Prue Wales and Tracy Carroll.

Contact: Helen Cahill

Email: h.cahill@unimelb.edu.au