Interprofessional Health Clinic

This interprofessional service is designed to provide participants with knowledge and skills around emotional and physical wellbeing. Healthy and Active Minds incorporates educational and practical components during each session to support participants to apply these skills in everyday life.

Each session runs from 10:30am to 12pm on Tuesdays (Toowoomba Campus) and Thursdays (Ipswich Campus) and is offered via telehealth in both locations. Participants can register for this service over the full 6 weeks, or alternatively register for single sessions.

The topics facilitated each week include:

Topic 1: Stress Management - Part 1

Stress is a physical and emotional reaction to changes and challenges in our lives. Some levels of stress are helpful, however stress becomes a problem when it is continuous or “chronic”. This type of stress can lead to fatigue, muscle tension, headaches, nausea, and more serious health problems such as hypertension and heart disease.

Topic 2: Stress Management - Part 2

How people’s bodies react to stress is unique for every individual and being a normal part of life, it is important to understand how to identify when you are stressed and learn strategies to manage this.

Topic 3: Beating the Blues

What is Depression? Causes of Depression? What can we do about it?

Mental illness can have an impact on a person’s cognitive, behavioural and social functioning. Those with a mental illness struggle to engage in their regular work, social and physical activities. Exercise is an effective component of management. Doing something is better than doing nothing at all. Let us share ideas on how!

Topic 4: Sleep Tips and Tricks

How much sleep do you normally get per night? Is it enough? Sleep, was long considered just a block of time when your brain and body shut down. Thanks to sleep research studies, it is now understood that certain stages of sleep are needed for us to feel well rested and energetic the next day, and other stages help us learn or make memories.

Topic 5: Mindfulness

Mind Full OR Mindful? Have you ever noticed that when you are doing familiar tasks like cleaning or cooking that your mind is thinking about something else? This is often called being on 'autopilot mode' and not being in touch with the 'here and now'. Mindfulness can be seen as the opposite of being on 'autopilot mode' and experiencing the world in the 'here and now'.

Topic 6: Making the Most of Retirement

What does retirement mean to you? Adjustment – often before entering retirement, you kept to a schedule, now you are free to structure your day as you please. Isolation – Humans are social creatures. How are you engaged with friends and family now? Social contribution – Who says you have to fully retire? Engage in volunteering doing the activities you choose to do and enjoy!

The Exercise Physiology Clinic is working in collaboration with the Interprofessional Health Clinic to offer internal clients an additional avenue to engage in student-led group exercises services as a means of increasing frequency of exercise. This can be viewed as an additional step offered to clients in supporting their transition into the community. Due to the stable/managed nature of these clients, this also presents an interprofessional opportunity for health students within other disciplines to undertake group-base exercise placement activities.

For more information, please visit the ‘UniSQ Clinics: Exercise Physiology Clinic’ webpage.

Regular ‘Health Checks’ can identify signs of current or emerging medical concerns. This service offers a general screening of health with the aim of identifying lifestyle risk for conditions such as heart disease, kidney disease, and type 2 diabetes. You will also gain practical tips on how you can lower your modifiable risk factors for improved general health and overall wellbeing.

Interprofessional Health Services offered at the Clinic are designed to screen clients for potential health risks, manage current chronic disease diagnoses, and engage clients in a person-specific healthcare plan to improve health, health literacy and wellbeing. These care plans are delivered by various disciplines over a 12-week period.

The Interprofessional Health Clinic - Child and Youth Service will include a service for children and adolescents to provide relevant assessment and time-limited, goal-driven intervention. This may include both individual and group-based interventions, and education sessions.
Depending on the individual client needs, clients will be able to access interprofessional and discipline-specific assessment (when required) to inform ongoing goal-driven intervention.

Inclusion Criteria:

• Children, adolescents and families.
• Who either do not have a formal diagnosis, or do not have access to funded services through schemes such as NDIS.
• Complex or acute care needs at risk of requiring specialised medical care whilst engaging in clinical activities.

STRIDE is a 12-week, individually tailored exercise program, designed by the University of Western Australia, which targets students and community members suffering mental health difficulties. This program fosters a mentee-mentor partnership to utilise exercise in managing or alleviating any mental health distress and to target person-centred goals participants may have.