Your baby’s six week check is an important health milestone. Telehealth is incredibly valuable in connecting people with their doctors and health care workers with one major drawback – no clinical examination!
Your baby’s six week check, along with the birth checkup, is vital in making sure your baby’s eyes, heart, hips and neurological system are developing normally. Importantly, this check is needed to determine if anything is not going according to plan. If a problem is found, then appropriate treatment can be started to help get your baby well again.
Telehealth is a valuable tool in health consultations. Telehealth is excellent at getting person to person communication happening between a health professional and those seeking their skills. Telehealth helps reduce person to person spread of disease which is key in today’s pandemic crisis.
BUT, telehealth does not allow for a hands on examination of your bub.
Is that OK?
Yes and no. Yes it is great to have a telehealth consultation as you will still get all the verbal advice and preventative health engagement from your doctor. You will still be able to talk through any worries you have with your paediatrician and get access to all those years of newborn baby experience.
The problem comes with the examination side of the six week check. Can hips, eyes and hearts be examined via telehealth? No. Your doctor can get an idea of how things are going, but cannot rule out the conditions that are, ideally, examined at the six week check e.g. hip dysplasia (clicky hips), astigmatism (blurred vision), coarctation (blood circulatory problems), organomegaly (abnormal enlargemnent of organs) and genital abnormality – among many others.
The good news is that doctors’ rooms across Australia are working hard to keep their clinics low risk. This means, along with strict hygiene and social distancing practices, they will ask you lots of questions about your health and that of your baby before you are allowed to visit. This can be annoying, but they are keeping their office safe so that you and your baby are less likely to come in contact with any communicable disease (like COVID-19).
What should I do?
Book your baby’s six week check as an ‘in person checkup’ with your paediatrician so that your baby can get the thorough health care they need; and you can get the peace of mind you need.
If you have any questions please contact us.
For more qualified, easy-to-understand specialist paediatric information visit Paedicare’s blog.