Assessment of Suspected Physical Abuse and neglect in Children and Adolescents (APAC)

The Starship Hospital annual training course for doctors who may manage cases of physical abuse and neglect is on again in August 2025. 

The course is delivered by experienced clinicians from Te Puaruruhau, the Starship Child Protection Team, in conjunction with colleagues from multiple paediatric subspecialties and our external auditor and contributor, Professor Lori Frasier from Pennsylvania.

We'll be meeting face-to-face for 2 days, in the Clinical Education Centre at Auckland City Hospital. This is a hybrid course: you can attend the course entirely online if you prefer (this has worked very well for the last 2 years).

Attendees are 50:50 advanced trainees and paediatricians from both Australia and New Zealand, and we have a lot of positive feedback from Australian trainees who find this course very useful for their clinical practice in Australia. We always look forward to welcoming our Australian colleagues to Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland.

There are approximately 35-40 hours of preLearning (eLearning modules and webinars), which become available online in the first week of July, and remain available for course registrants (along with the recordings of the live course) for 12 months after the course.

We recommend you allocate 3-5 hours per week to work through the preLearning prior to the course. If that is not possible, consider taking CME leave for the preLearning, as well as the live course. You'll get the most out of the live two days if you have been able to work your way through the preLearning in advance.

Monday and Tuesday August 25 and 26 are interactive and case-based sessions, including our very popular sessions on “Talking to Families” with live actors, and our Reality Court, with lawyers from the Crown Solicitor’s office. We encourage you to volunteer for these sessions. Although it feels scary to volunteer, all who do so find it a very valuable and immensely rewarding learning opportunity.

This course is designed to meet the needs of Consultants and Advanced Trainees in Paediatrics or related specialties (including Emergency Medicine and Surgical Specialties) where seeing cases of suspected abuse and neglect will form a part of clinical responsibilities. If you deal (even occasionally) with cases of suspected physical child abuse and neglect, then this course is for you.

We look forward to seeing you there Patrick Kelly (on behalf of our multi-disciplinary and multi-agency faculty)

Register

Location

Hybrid

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