Issue #1
 

Welcome to MoCCA! 

A very warm welcome to all clinics who have joined the MoCCA Study. We are looking forward to working with you over the next year. 

In our first newsletter we focus on making sure you're set up and ready to go. Below, you'll find instructions on getting started with MoCCA. 

Over the next 12 months when managing a person with chlamydia or pelvic inflammatory disease (PID), we would like you to use MoCCA resources to support best practice management. These include our website and workflow resources (for example, suggested autofill text and patient factsheets). More information about these is below.

We will invite you to participate in other data collection throughout the study. This could be a short online survey (look out for these in our newsletters) or a one-on-one interview. These are your opportunities to tell us what you think about the study, what’s working or not working for you, and how we might improve.

Please tell your patients diagnosed with chlamydia or PID about our survey. Patients who complete our survey will receive a $20 gift voucher. We have provided hard-copy flyers and a QR code to help you inform your patients about our survey. You can also access the flyers here.  

Click the image to go to the MoCCA website. 

1. Familiarise yourself with the website (www.mocca.org.au)

Our website has chlamydia focussed resources, guidance and tips for health professionals, resources for patients, and suggested CPD activities. Please save it to your favourites for quick access. 

2. Use autofill text in your patient notes to support documenting the consultation

Three shortcuts are now available in your medical software that you can use to help document the clinical consultation. Type the relevant short cut text into your patient notes and the editable text will auto-populate.

CTMX for chlamydia management

PIDMX for pelvic inflammatory disease

PDPT for patient delivered partner therapy

3. Think about pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) in chlamydia positive patients with female reproductive organs

There are several resources on our website to support diagnosis of PID, including a differential diagnoses flowchart, and an information sheet about pelvic examinations. We have also developed a factsheet for patients, available here. 

4. Review options for partner management, and familiarise yourself with patient delivered partner therapy

Resources for you and your patients to discuss notifying sexual partners from the past six months, including an example text message to send to partners, are available on our website and on our patient factsheet. 

PDPT may be an option for your patients. Information about how and why you might utilise PDPT can be found on our website. We have developed several tools to assist you in using PDPT, including a decision flowchart, and prescription template.

5. Consider how to support your patients to return for a retest

Retesting is recommended at three months after chlamydia treatment to detect reinfection. There are several options for organising retesting for your patients, including postal retesting. 

Everything you need to participate is on the MoCCA website.
However, your clinic will also receive a welcome pack that includes hardcopies of key resources and some desk tools (see below) to remind you about MoCCA. If you need anything else, please let us know (mocca-info@unimelb.edu.au).

Image of a MoCCA table tent for your desk.
 

In 2023, the Medical Board of Australia introduced a new CPD system with 50 hours of CPD required annually across three activity types: Education activities, Measuring outcomes, and Reviewing performance. The new program permits submitting activities that are part of day-to-day practice. GPs should refer to the RACGP website or ACRRM website for information about the new-look CPD program.

We have worked with our partner organisations and GPs to develop some chlamydia focussed self-directed CPD activities related to MoCCA. MoCCA is unable to offer accredited CPD activities/hours.
 

Our suggested self-directed CPD activities can be found here.  

We would love to hear about your early thoughts of MoCCA.

Please take our short survey here. 

MoCCA is a five-year project funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council (APP1150014) that seeks to address gaps in chlamydia management in Australian general practice. MoCCA is working with general practices in Victoria, NSW and Queensland, and focuses on supporting testing for repeat infection within recommended timeframes, strengthening partner management and  PID diagnosis.

The MoCCA team is based at the University of Melbourne and is led by Professor Jane Hocking. You can read more about us, and the work we do here.

• The Australian STI management guidelines have recently been updated. You can view the updates here. 
• Read more about best practice chlamydia management in our Australian Journal of General Practice article via this link. You may like to log your time taken to review this article as part of your self-reported CPD activity.
   
• Keen to learn more about taking a sexual history and assessing STI risk for women or about the role of GPs in Australia’s syphilis epidemic? Watch this recent RACGP and Jean Hailes webinar here. 
   

• Australian STI Management Guidelines for use in Primary Care 
  Australian Sexual and Reproductive Health Alliance [ASRHA]
• Australasian Contact Tracing Guidelines 
  Australasian Society for HIV, Viral Hepatitis and Sexual Health Medicine [ASHM]
• RACGP Red Book, Sexually transmissible infections 
  9th Edition
• STI Atlas
  Melbourne Sexual Health Centre [MSHC]
• Therapeutic Guidelines
  Formerly eTG Complete
   

You are receiving this email because your clinic is participating in the MoCCA study. You can read more about the study here mocca.org.au/about-mocca, talk to your practice manager/principal GP, or reply to this email to get in touch with us should you have any questions.

MoCCA is funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council (APP1150014) and is a collaboration between the University of Melbourne and our project investigators and partner organisations. Click here for a list of our collaborators.