VICDOC Summer 2025 - Flipbook - Page 15
I’ve developed two free digital
often don't believe they have the
enablers to aid risk identification
knowledge or confidence to have
and breast cancer prevention
those discussions, much less do
through medication.
the prescribing. They feel it needs a
specialist. But then, 98% said that
One is an online tool called iPrevent,
which helps healthy women to estimate
their individual breast cancer risk and
provides them with tailored advice about
how to act on and reduce that risk. It’s
based on Australian guidelines and is
recommended by BreastScreen and
other key organisations. The second is
they could write the ongoing scripts
to take a woman through five years
of treatment if it was initiated by a
specialist. That's why we developed
the PCMed Telehealth Service. It's a
real partnership with primary care,
and it’s a practical and responsive
research outcome.
a novel telehealth service, called the
Preventing Cancer with Medications
(PCMed) Service. It's for healthy women
who already know they're at increased
risk, to support their understanding of
and use of medications.
We've identified a workforce gap in the
breast cancer prevention setting – it’s
not clear whose job it is to implement
personalised prevention.
I'm intrinsically curious, so I sought a
career that would reward curiosity.
Medicine fits the bill. When I was doing
my basic physician training, I was
interested in infectious diseases.
That's where I thought I was going.
Then I rotated through oncology, and
I wasn't really looking forward to it.
I thought it would be hard and
depressing, but instead I found it
If you were at increased risk for breast
intellectually and emotionally fulfilling.
cancer, whose job would it be to talk
I was drawn to caring for people when
to you about breast cancer prevention
they're feeling intensely vulnerable,
medications and prescribe them? In
which cancer patients often are.
a perfect world, it would be the job
I really value the raw honesty of my
of primary care. But our research has
patient interactions and the strong
identified that primary care clinicians
bonds that are created.
15
