Children’s Health

At Highgate Hill Doctors all of our doctors and many of the staff have children of their own and delight in their care. Many of our own children (and indeed many of our staff) have grown up and gone to local schools here! This local experience strengthens our connection with children and local families and we like you, as parents, to feel invested in their care.

Of course a family is a family here regardless of the mix of culture, sexuality or gender identification of the parents or children.

We understand that treating a child is not just about engaging with the child and getting them better, but bringing the parents along for the journey as well. Our paediatric experience in the practice is enormous but as always at Highgate Hill Doctors, if we are not sure we will ask a colleague in for another opinion or refer up the the Queenslands Children’s Hospital or one of our network of paediatric colleagues.

There is no charge for Medicare eligible vaccination visits for children but because of our extra attention to children we do charge a reduced private consultation fee for non-vaccination visits.

We provide immunisations for babies and children following the national immunisation program, starting from birth, six weeks, four months, 6 months, 12 months, 18 months and 4 years.

We offer catch-up vaccination programmes for adolescents who may choose not to participate in the school based programmes or who have missed out on any immunisations.

Our lovely nurse Jac McClafferty is an invaluable part of our medical team here and has great skills with children.

Adolescents

We ourselves have grown up with many of our practice children. As they enter adolescence and early adulthood, new issues arrive and they start to develop their own relationships with us separate from the family. We strongly encourage adolescents to discuss issues with their parents but there is a point when they start to make their own health decisions and it may occasionally be inappropriate to involve the parents if that’s their wish. Trust us, we have been that anxious parent in the waiting room or at home and we will endeavour to be as wise in our counsel as possible!