Hay fever (yes, it’s that time of year again…)

By Dr. Eunice Sales

With the warmer spring weather, trees showing green growth and flowers in bloom, have you been a little down with a runny nose that just won’t stop?

You might be suffering from hayfever or allergic rhinitis! It’s a common condition and affects about 1 in 5 people.

Apart from a runny, itchy or congested nose, you can also have sneezing and itchy/watery eyes.

Symptoms can occur in occur in spring or summer due to pollen or also all year round due to other triggers such as dust mites or animal hair. Sometimes these symptoms can lead to other problems like difficulty with sleep, headaches and difficulty with concentrating at work and school.

Treatments you can try before seeing your doctor include salt water nasal sprays, corticosteroid nasal sprays and non-sedating antihistamines.

If you’ve tried all of these and still struggle with symptoms, it might be time to see your local GP. We’re more than happy to discuss your symptoms and other treatments with you.

Eleanor Clinic is a fully accredited medical practice!

Not even a year old and Eleanor Clinic already passed the strict requirements as an independent accredited medical centre!

This means we have been assessed by the standard of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners and have passed. Accreditation shows patients that we are serious about providing high quality care.

Di doesn’t like us to say this, but this is due to the absolutely fantastic work of our practice manager and nurse Di DiBlasi. Thank you so much Di for all your hard work!

We are so lucky to have you as part of the Eleanor Clinic Team!

How to be an LGBTIQ+ ally

Wear it purple day is coming up on Friday 30/08/2019. It’s the perfect time to encourage supportive, safe, empowering and inclusive environments. Wear purple day is about supporting LGBTIQ+ young people, and challenging social attitudes to help shape a better world for us all to live in.

It is a great opportunity to think about how we perceive other people, and how we can improve being inclusive and respectful.

At Eleanor Clinic we are committed to providing an environment that is safe and inclusive for people of all sexual orientations, sex and gender identities.

For more information:

https://au.reachout.com

KidsHelpline – for ages 5-25: 1800 55 1800

Switchboard Victoria: 1800 184 527

We turned six months old!

So not quite out of nappies, but getting there. We started as two local Inner Westie mums with a strong drive to create a clinic we would feel welcome at ourselves. That meant we had to offer care to the highest medical standards, sure. But there’s more to a clinic than ‘just’ getting excellent medicine. What Eleanor Clinic really needed beyond that was to make sure everyone felt welcome.

We strive to be inclusive to people no matter the background or the reason they seek medical care. And, yes, we very much feel that this doesn’t have to happen in a typical ‘clinic’ environment. When you go to the doctor you might as well feel at ease there. To be honest, we were quite anxious how things were going to go. We’re trained to look after patients, not to run a clinic, so this was very much a jump into the deep end for us.

Dr Eunice Sales

Quite simply: we have been blown away by all your support! You have given us a go when you could not be sure what to expect and we are very grateful for this opportunity. You might have noticed that the clinic is getting busier. In fact, we are thrilled to report that Dr Eunice Sales has joined our team. We are looking to recruit more like minded doctors and nurses to join us to make sure we can keep up with demand and not having people wait weeks for an appointment.

In the meantime, if you can’t get an appointment straight away we do offer waiting lists for the day. If for some reason you can’t keep your appointment with us please let us know, so we can give someone on the waiting list the chance to make use of it. If you’re looking how you can make things flow even easier, please make sure to look after your test results, referrals and pathology requests. While we are generally happy to reprint these if required, it does throw a spanner in the works as it generates a lot of extra work for the clinic.

Di administering Kolya’s first flu shot ever.

On to other grounds: You will have heard in the media that we’ve had an early flu-season in Victoria this year. We’ve got the flu vaccines available at Eleanor Clinic for all age groups. We very much recommend the flu vaccination to every child (older than 6 months) and adult, even if you’re completely healthy. Speaking of vaccinations: We are an accredited yellow fever vaccination clinic. In fact, we are the only clinic in the West able to provide you with all comprehensive travel vaccines. So, there you have it: we are excited how well things are going and we’re eager to make it even better to suit your needs. We’re looking forward now to Eleanor Clinic’s 1st birthday…

Love,

The Eleanor Clinic Team.