Shining a light on women’s health

Hawkins Medical Clinic set to open doors to new clinic

There is a simple motivation behind this month’s opening of a specialised Women’s Health Clinic by Mount Gambier service provider Hawkins Medical Clinic. “It’s time we started taking women’s health issues a little more seriously.”

Dr Monique Kanters is the driver of the project and those are her words as she looks forward to the January 30 opening of the new service at Hawkins Pinehall Avenue site.

“There is increasing community awareness of how women’s health issues impact woman physically, mentally, socially and economically,” Dr Kanters said. “It is our aim to help women achieve their best health in order to achieve what they want in life.”

The clinic will cover specific women’s health issues from contraception, preconception counselling, antenatal and postnatal care to pelvic pain, perimenopause and menopause.

There is a clear trend emerging in medicine in Australia and Dr Kanters said the clock is ticking on finding solutions for the emerging challenges.

“A lot of GPs are pulling out of obstetrics full stop and they are not interested in doing it in a clinical setting,” Dr Kanters said. “And that is detrimental for all women, especially across region and rural Australia.”

Dr Kanters has seen the decline in numbers with her own eyes, most recently when she sat her Advanced Diploma of Obstetrics exam.

“I asked when the second sitting of the exam was and they said there wasn’t one – the number in the room with me was it,” she said. “The GP workforce is shrinking as is the interest in women’s health and we need to deal with this now. You can’t expect everyone to do everything, even in a GP practice, and becoming skilled in specialist areas takes time and effort but we need to get people interested in women’s health to fight the trend.” And Dr Kanters believed Hawkins Medical Clinic was well placed to do just that, given the clinic takes third year Flinders University medical students into its fold, as well as interns from the hospital to do a rotation.

“If they have a positive experience early while living in a rural area they might think about taking that path as a full blown obstetrician, gynaecologist,” she said. “It is a way of future proofing the workforce and these things take time and we won’t see the results for five or six years. We are also hoping to take the pressure off hospital services.”

There are seven Hawkins doctors, both male and female, who will be involved in the clinic, each with different skills and interests. The new Women’s Health clinic at Hawkins Medical aims to cater for the broader Limestone Coast area and will provide critical support to women in the region.

“The women’s clinic is going to be a team effort – dietitian, physiotherapist, psychologist and midwives down the track,” Dr Kanters said. “Some conditions can be really debilitating and if you can’t go to work how do you pay the bills.”

Hawkins Medical Clinic practice manager Judith Williams practice manager said the Women’s Health Clinic was an initiative designed to encourage all women of the Limestone Coast to put their health first.

The clinic will open from Monday, January 30 and patients can self-refer through the website or can be referred by their current GP or allied health professional.