On Friday 24th February, ASHM hosted its inaugural Hepatitis B Prescriber Forum. This virtual peer-led forum covered current and relevant sector priorities and topics, such as navigating Medicare, providing culturally responsive hepatitis B care, seroconversion, and hepatitis B and pregnancy.
Last month 84 healthcare professionals from across Australia attended ASHM’s inaugural Hepatitis B Prescriber Forum. This virtual peer-led forum provided an opportunity for healthcare works across Australia to come together and share knowledge and expertise on hepatitis B management and care.
Key highlights included the panel discussion on perspectives of individuals living with hepatitis B, where we heard individual’s experiences of diagnosis and treatment. The importance of healthcare professions providing culturally appropriate care as well as being informed of the mental and social impacts of living with hepatitis B was reinforced in the case study discussions on providing culturally appropriate care to migrant and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients.
The Hepatitis B Prescriber forum has received positive feedback with one attendee commenting ‘A fantastic array of speakers from many backgrounds with useful and interesting presentations. Thanks for including the section on Medicare – so often overlooked in primary care presentations and the speakers were great!’. Other attendees mentioned how important it would be to keep the forum going in future years.
ASHM thank the Commonwealth Department of health for providing the funding to deliver this forum. ASHM also thanks the range of hepatitis B clinical advisors, speakers, facilitators, and steering committee members who helped bring this forum together.
