[Ieyesha Roberts]
I live in Kempsey, NSW. I'm a Dunghutti woman. I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease and that was incompressive vasculitis. I have undergone multiple treatments including two types of dialysis: peritoneal and also hemodialysis. I received a transplant in 2013 which lasted me for 5 years and was removed in 2018. Since then, I've been back on dialysis, which is chemo dialysis, and I've been doing that from home.
[Roxanne Ridgeway - Ieyesha's mother]
Ieyesha has fantastic days where you could see it and think she's just an average 22-year-old girl, that there's nothing wrong with her at all. On other days, it can be the total opposite.
[Ieyesha Roberts]
With being a dialysis patient, because I do get quite tired easily because my body's working overtime. I do try to keep up with everyone and do whatever everyone else is doing because I don't want to miss out on, you know, being a normal 22-year-old.
A lot of my virtual care appointments are just over the phone. The ones with my hospital, my transplant team. Those are via a Zoom meeting.
[Ro Stirling-Kelly - District Manager Aboriginal Intergrated Care Initiatives]
The data locally from Mid North Coast virtual care team shows that 11% of their patients or the people that use the service are identified as Aboriginal.
[Ieyesha Roberts]
Virtual care is good because it does give you that flexibility of being able to, you know, fit it around your day-to-day if you can't travel and you're unwell, and if you need to do dialysis from home and you have your appointment while you're just doing dialysis, it does make it quite helpful.
[Roxanne Ridgeway]
Some of the improvements I'd like to see are putting the patients first and seeing how they feel about either attending in person or virtual health, depending totally on how they're feeling at that time and what issues they need to raise or things that need to be addressed.
[Ro Stirling-Kelly]
I believe virtual care could be built upon in a very positive way by engaging and encouraging other Allied Health professionals to have their opportunity to be involved in that care. So, to be able to see your nurse or your doctor and really feel that connectedness, I think that's one of the big benefits and the big selling points of virtual care for Aboriginal people.
