Paediatrician Dr Doug Shelton says:
I’m a paediatrician who received his training in the eighties and nineties, and back then very little known in Australia about FASD. In about the mid 2000’s I was working in an outpatient clinic, and a very lovely lady with two children, in her foster care came into my clinic and I said “how can I help you?” and she said “I think these children have FASD” and I said to her “What’s that?”
Unfortunately though, when I tried to find some training in FASD, none was available in Australia. And indeed the only way we could source training was to go overseas to Vancouver, Canada. And that ah, started our journey as a team in the diagnosis of FASD, and we first opened our clinic in 2014. Between 200-2013 we only diagnosed one child with FASD. Since 2014 we’ve diagnosed over a hundred, and the people haven’t changed, the tools we use haven’t changed, but what has changed is our knowledge and our skill base about FASD.
Paediatrician Dr James Fitzpatrick says:
So we’ve got the Gold Coast clinic that Doug Shelton started. Ah, Westmead Children’s Hospital Clinic that Liz Elliot started (unclear).
Dr Doug Shelton says:
I think there’s definitely a role for better education and training around FASD, and that’s for people who are already health professionals, but I also think that basic modules on FASD should be incorporated into every University course that is to do with health. So that would include allied health in all their various forms. Nursing, and Medicine.
“What else have you been doing today, Have you been having fun?”
Jazpa says:
Yeah.
Dr Doug Shelton says:
FASD needs to come out of the closet and make it a topic of mainstream conversation. In a similar way to what happened with Autistic Spectrum Disorder in the nineties, and in the last few years.
“Yeah, another high five, what about a proper one?”