dr yes
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Fill out the registration form to indicate your interest for Dr YES to visit your school.
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INTRODUCTION
Dr YES (Dr Youth Education Sessions) is a program involving groups of trained medical student volunteers visiting schools and delivering presentations about adolescent health and lifestyle issues to year 10-12 students.
The presentations complement the school's health education curriculum by using sexual health, alcohol and other drugs or mental health as a context to emphasise the role of GP's and encourage young people to access health care.
The program was piloted in 1997 on a small scale, involving only 5 medical students. In 2000, 44 medical students were trained to deliver Dr YES to seven schools across the metropolitan area, reaching just over 1000 students.
Schools contact the AMA(WA) Foundation to organise the session.
In 2001 the program has evolved again. Another 86 medical students have volunteered to join Dr YES, giving a total of 130 trained medical students.
Delivery of the Dr YES project is currently being run in the metropolitan area, visiting approximately 600 students so far this year.
It is anticipated that Dr YES will reach approximately 2000 students by the end of the year, both in the metropolitan and rural areas.
Each subject area is very diverse, encoureaging young people to further question their health choices.
The information delivered in each session is dependent on the needs of the young people that have been identified through focus testing.
All three modules include information on Youth Friendly Doctors (doctors who have undertaken specific training in youth health issues) and accessing health care.
Dr YES is a very unique and innovative project and has the advantage of using young adults under the age of 25 to inform teenagers about their health.
The school visits are a source of important information and they essentially focus on showing young people that doctors are prepared to talk about difficult lifestyule issues in an open and non-judgemental manner.
The message that the medical students are promoting is about health access, which would complement the learning objectives for health education.
Dr YES was very successful in its first year in 2000.
Extensive evaluations are conducted at every school visit, using both pre and post design questionnaires to access changes in knowledge and behaviour.
Through 'word of mouth' and articles in school newsletters, 58 schools requested multiple Dr YES visits for 2001.
This equates to three visits per week throughout the year with a number of schools that are currently on the waiting list.
The volunteers for the Dr YES project are all medical students, from years one to six at the University of Western Australia.
Currently there are 130 students trained to deliver sessions to any school requesting the service.
At each session, there are approximately five to ten volunteers.
This equates to one medical student per six school students for the small group discussions.
The medical students are required to take time away from their course work to attend these sessions, though this is made easier with the support from the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry.
As well as the medical student volunteers, most school sessions also have a Youth Friendly Doctor volunteer their time to promote health access in the local area.
In 2000, 91 doctors were successful in gaining accreditation as 'youth friendly'.
The Youth Friendly Doctor Program has also been delivered in Busselton, over two weekends in July and August.
This service will enable more young people in the south-west to identify with their local GP and be more comfortable in approaching them, knowing that they are youth friendly.
YOUTH FRIENDLY DOCTORS
In conjunction with Dr YES is the Youth Friendly Doctor (YFD) project.
This began in 2000 and currently has over 100 doctors trained and more still training.
More information on Youth Friendly Doctors can be found on the YFD page.
A SCHOOL SESSION
Fill out the registration form to indicate your interest for Dr YES to visit your school.
We currently offer three modules for our Dr YES sessions:
Sexual health
Alcohol & Other Drugs
Mental Health
Each of the sessions follow a similar format, with a skit and song to begin, followed by a small group discussion, and ending with a game or demonstration.
The sexual health module also involves a slide show of many STI's.
In general, we limit the amount of school students per session to two classes (ie 60 students), and any number under that is suitable.
We like to arrange the groups so that there is one medical student to every five or six school students.
So for a class of 30, we would normally send five medical students.
As the AMA(WA) is a non-profit organistaion, we do ask for a donation from the school for the sessions.
As the number of sessions varies from school to school, we ask that you talk to us about this.
CONTACTING US
In order to book a session, the school will need to contact either of the project officers at the AMA(WA) Foundation on 9273 3000.
We are fully booked for this year, but are taking details for sessions to be conducted next year.
AMA(WA) Foundation details.
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