 So, today I'm going to talk to you about Victoria's Road Safety Policy. Morris has talked a bit about it, so I won't go too much into detail, and all the sorts of resources that we have for drivers in carers and health professionals, community education programs that I run, talk about a couple of other projects that I'm involved in, and obviously we're going to take some questions later. So, as we heard today, we don't have age-based testing in Victoria, and drivers can drive to any age, as long as they're safe to do so. As Morris said, on a per-licence basis, Victoria's older drivers are at least as safe as those from other jurisdictions that have age-based testing. But at VicRoads, we're responsible for making sure that people are safe to drive, so you might have to come in and provide a medical report or undertake an on-road test. And it is the law that drivers advise VicRoads if they've got any permanent or long-term injury or illness that may impair their ability to drive. This is not well-known in the community. When I go out and do the talks to the community groups, they didn't know, they had to report conditions. I go and do a talk to a diabetes support group where everybody there has got diabetes and nobody's reported it to VicRoads. They will turn and look at each other. I even bring on medical report forms, you know, just take one of these, it'll save you making a phone call to VicRoads. But we do rely on the health professionals to advise patients which are the reportable conditions, because we don't want patients to self-diagnose about what does and doesn't have to be reported to VicRoads, okay? So we really rely on the health professionals to provide that advice. VicRoads isn't going to come knocking on your door to see what medical conditions you've got that you haven't reported. But as it's been mentioned before, you're really driving uninsured if you haven't reported a reportable medical condition to VicRoads, okay? You're driving uninsured. If your insurance company finds out that you had a medical condition that you didn't report and they're likely to void your insurance, they can't ring up VicRoads and ask what medical conditions you've got, because we can't tell you that because of the Privacy Act. But if they find out some other way, then you may not have any insurance. And also, if you hurt somebody, they can sue you, because you're really driving illegally if you haven't reported those medical conditions. So that's a really important message to get across to your clients. And that's one that I get across to the older driver groups that I speak to, and that really hits home that if they're driving with no insurance, they sort of go, hmm. So what's going to happen if you have a minor crash? The other driver, you know, get out to exchange your names and addresses and you get out with a walking stick. The driver's going to say to his insurance company, that woman who hit me, she's supposed to be driving, she walks with a walking stick. No insurance. So the topic of my presentation today is notifying VicRoads, is that enough? For drivers, it is, as I said, drivers have to report medical conditions that may affect safe driving to VicRoads. And if they do that, then we take it from there. But from health professionals, no, it's not enough. It's only one part of the process. As health professionals, you need to routinely consider the fitness to drive and mobility issues for your clients. You need to advise the drivers of which conditions are reportable, as I've mentioned before, and recall that advice and action in your case notes as Morris has alluded to. Make sure that you've covered yourself. Give the person the advice and then write down that you gave them the advice. So you've at least covered yourself in case something ends up in court. And also, you need to support drivers and carers with mobility transitions. And follow up, if you've given people advice, follow up on that advice. Don't just think that once offers enough. Obviously, people who lack insight, if you give them advice, they're not going to take it. So perhaps you can get through to the families instead. In the end of the day, you just report them to VicRoads. Morris said you can't be sued for reporting in good faith. VicRoads has got a lot of resources, which we designed to help assist you. We've heard about medical review from Morris earlier. We've got licensing provisions, such as the conditional licenses. So they can provide people with some sort of mobility that's in line with their abilities. And we've got resources, paper resources, and also web pages, which I'm going to talk to you about. So the resources are really there to support you, to support health professionals and carers and drivers, to understand how our licensing system works and what people's obligations are. Victorian Auto Driver's Handbook is out on the table. All the resources I'm talking about today are in the resource room and lots of people came by at lunchtime to pick them up, which was good. So this is the most popular requested publication from VicRoads, and the older drivers really like it, and it does set out their legal obligations in reporting medical conditions. So that's one way to get the message across to them or to their families. It's got a self-assessment checklist to see if any sort of driving problems have crept up when you're over the years, from when you first got your licence. It talks about medical conditions and medicines and right through to planning for change. So it'd be great to think that we could all drive to the day we die, but we probably won't be able to. So planning for that time when you don't drive anymore is really important. We've heard how devastating it is to have your licence taken away from you, but at least if you've planned for getting around some other way, it makes it a lot easier to decision. Now, it develops on webpages late last year when we launched them with Victoria Police. So what I've done with the older drivers' handbook is I've put it up on webpages on VicRoads' website and the URL is there. So if you don't have a copy of the older drivers' handbook, but you want to see something about the information in there, there's the URL for that. The other thing which is really important, websites that I developed last year, webpages, is one for concerned family and friends of older or impaired drivers, okay? That bit of information wasn't out there in the community. So what do you do if you are concerned about someone being an impaired driver, being a family member or a close friend? What action can you take? And I'll just show you what those webpages look like. That's the older driver one, and down the side is the equivalent to the chapters, and they've got drop-down boxes up the top, and you can get all the information that you need from the older driver handbook there. And this is what the family and friends' webpages look like. So if you go down the side, it talks about the aging driver. So what are the normal processes associated with aging, medical conditions and medicines, and how they affect driving? The warning signs, what to look for. Is your older driver, is your family member really impaired or not, is this normal signs of aging, and what should I be looking for? It talks about how driving skills deteriorate as we age, and helping them stay on the road. So these pages aren't about putting older drivers or impaired drivers off the road. If they're too impaired to be on the road, okay, we don't want them on there, but there may be some ways that you can help them stay on the road. So maybe they just need to reduce their driving. Maybe they drive to the train station and get the train into Melbourne or something like that, rather than drive all the way. So there is some information there about helping them to stay on the road, going to the doctors with them and discussing driving, make sure that driving's brought up. Then there's the alternatives to driving, so helping them to get around some other way. And there's a section on reporting. So that talks about the driver's obligation to report medical conditions to Vic roads that may affect driving, and also if all else fails and you need to report someone to Vic roads, how you go about that. So I think you'll find that these web pages will be really useful to you in your setting, and I encourage you to have a look and see what you think and give me feedback if you like. And it also talks about what the law is. A few of the resources. There's a medical review fact sheet out on the resource table, so it explains how a medical review system works. So that might be something that you can hand to your patients, because the first thing that people find out about how our licensing system works is when they get that letter from Vic roads saying you've been reported and you've got to, you know, here's your medical report form and you've got to go and get it filled in, and they don't even know how the system works. So that's a good brochure to give out to your clients. We've got brochures on specific medical conditions, diabetes and glaucoma and seizures and sleep apnea. And dementia was a new one that I developed last year. That was developed on request from occupational therapists because they wanted to be able to hand that bit of information across to carers. It's really the carers that we need to get to when we're talking about cognitive decline. Alzheimer's Australia endorsed the content in the brochure and it talks about people's responsibilities and how Vic roads can support safe driving. It talks about assessments and licensing provisions and it also talks about other resources such as the dementia hotline. So that's that on the table for you to pick up as well. And a lot of my brochures, the information is on the Vic roads web pages too. There was a doctor speaking this morning, Chris, who talked about this research. So basically some doctors at Monash University did a survey of doctors and the results that came back from the doctors was that the doctors were saying things like, well, we don't think that we should have to make the licensing decision, we think it should be Vic roads. Well, as we've heard today over and over again, it is Vic roads. We think that Vic roads should provide us with education and assessing fitness to drive. Well, I've actually got a program on that that's available from our website, which I'll talk to you about. So there was a lot of misinformation out there for the doctors. And so we produce this fact sheet in conjunction with the people that conducted the research. It explains the role of the doctors versus the role of Vic roads. And it very clearly points out that Vic roads is the decision maker. So that way that preserves the doctor-patient relationship. The doctor can say, look, it's not my decision. Vic roads will be making the decision. It also talks about using occupational therapists for community assessment initially. So a lot of doctors are hesitant to bring up driving. They don't want to say to their patient, I don't think you should drive anymore. But they could refer your patient to an occupational therapist, a generalist OT. And they look at the person's whole life style or all aspects of their life, and that will include driving. So once again, that helps to maintain that doctor-patient relationship where the doctor isn't saying, I don't think you should drive. Put it in the hands of the OT. No, not a driving assessor, just a generalist OT who comes to the house and looks at all aspects of the person's lifestyle and management of that lifestyle, and they can bring up driving as well. Can they? Thank you, OTs. So this GP fact sheet, there's copies out there on the table for you, and that was sent out with the hard copy of the new guidelines to all the doctors which they should get shortly. Okay, Safe Drive Medical is the name of the education program that I developed several years ago. It's accessible from Vic roads website, and it takes you through assessing a patient's fitness to drive. So there's professional development points allocated for doctors, optometrists and OTs. So OTs can go on there and do the course and get their points for it. I've updated in line with the new guidelines, and that's how you access it from the Vic roads website. And I'll just show you what that looks like. The modules, road trauma statistics, ethics and law, driver licenses, the health standards, health professional practice, referrals, medical and non-medical, some case study to submit the information, and there's active learning modules in there. And one of those active learning modules, which I thought about today when someone else was talking, is actually going through your clients, list of clients and finding out, do you really know who drives and who doesn't drive? Who's got a license and who hasn't? Is it a heavy vehicle license? So that was one of the exercises in that active learning module. And this is what the website looks like. Just go on to there, you have to register. Anybody can go on and do this course. You don't need to be a health professional. All you have to do is set yourself up with a username and password, and you can take yourself through the modules. And you will learn more about assessing fitness or drive, and obviously we're all interested in that because that's what we're here for today. So once you've registered, you can log in and start. And if you haven't completed a particular module and you log out, it will take you back to where you were in that module. So it puts the modules up there on the front screen so you can see which ones you've done and which ones you haven't. And when you've started and finished it, how much of one you've done, and you can just work your way through those modules in any order that you like. So I encourage you to go on and look at that program and once again, give me feedback on it. We've heard about the guidelines from Fiona this morning and as she said, there's a focus on the key chronic conditions. It also talks about the role of practical driver assessments in there because once again, the doctors were saying, we need some help here and so we actually get a practical driving assessment from an OT and it also talks about the role of generalist OTs as well. So that was new information that was added in that wasn't in previous versions. Fiona talked about this publication today up on the screen. There's also, those are in the resource room. Austroids have updated their website and they've got the client information sheet there. There's links on their website to state-based resources and obviously as part of the implementation, there's soft copies available for people and hard copies out to all health professionals. So we've also got a couple of resources on managing transitions because some people need to be managed through that transition from driving to non-driving. As someone mentioned this morning, maybe Therese said, have the discussion early in it. Don't wait until there's been a crash or there's been an incident before you start talking about making that transition with some of your clients. The red flags to look for, the dings in the car and the scrapes on the gate posts and things like that. And linking with all the other resources that are available, there's a disabled motorist association, there's a dementia hotline. You can also contact Vic Crode's medical review for advice in confidence. There's a separate phone number for health professionals that's in the contacts in the back of your guidelines. We've got a book on motorised mobility scooters and electric wheelchairs. So these are the people who need some help with their mobility. So the eligibility to use them is that you actually can't walk or you have difficulty walking. So they're not for people who don't drive anymore, just decide to hang up their keys. They're only for people who have a mobility issue. It talks about all the, you're laughing at me. And anybody can go out and buy one and the retailers will sell them to anybody. So it goes through all the information in there including the pedestrian road rules which a lot of people aren't aware of. And there's getting around without a car is a brochure. Now, unfortunately it's very metro-centric but we did contact some people in our rural areas to tell us what sort of information we could put in there which would be more helpful to people in rural areas but they didn't really come back with anything worthwhile. One guy said it was fantastic, don't change anything. And one person said, oh, you need to put all the services in there for all the different regions. Well, we can't do that in one publication. So your input or feedback on that publication and how we could improve it would also be a benefit to Vic Roads. I run community education programs on request. So Probus Clubs and Chronic Disease Support Groups. I basically cover the content of the Older Drivers Handbook. I also do pedestrian talks to community health centres when they have a falls prevention program. And I do mobility scooter talks as well to local government. They put on a mobility scooter day, support groups and scope. I also scope train people to train disabled people how to use scooters. So the people with cerebral palsy and things like that. So I'm part of that training program and teach them what they need to know so they can teach the people on the powered wheelchairs basically. One of the projects that I conducted recently was to send out in a community mobility kit all a range of all my brochures. So older drivers and younger drivers are all out there on the table. I sent it to about 100 pilot health centres. I sent in some rural, some metro and I included an evaluation form in there asking people, did they know about the brochures? Would they be useful? Would they order them again? And so all the feedback we got was really positive. So I think hopefully that you'll find that those brochures and the information are very helpful as well. The other study that I'm involved in is a longitudinal study of older healthy drivers. They have to be 75 years plus to be in the study. Morris is also involved in it. It's a five-year study conducted through Monash University with participants from Canada, New Zealand and Victoria. And it's a naturalistic driving over time study. So there's like a black box in these people's cars and we're gonna collect data on them for five years. So everywhere they went, how many crashes they had, how fast they drove, what route they took, everything's gonna be captured for five years. And also their health status is gonna be measured. So it was measured before they came to take part in the study and it will be measured at the end as well. Hopefully they're still still around. We did talk, Richard spoke this morning about screening tools, getting a good screening tool which is gonna be able to screen whether someone's can fit to drive or not fit to drive, going to crash, not going to crash. At the moment as Richard said, there isn't one of those around. But one of the outcomes from this five-year study hopes to actually develop that screening tool to be able to make a licensing decision on whether someone's fit to drive or not. And also I'm looking at training for older drivers to see if that might be able to improve their driving. So in conclusion, notifying VicRoads is that enough? No, it's not. If you diagnose a serious or chronic medical condition which may affect the ability to drive, then tell your patient to report it. Really importantly, record that advising your notes and then follow up and ask them have they reported it. And if they can't, if they haven't, there's no family available to tap into, then you report them to VicRoads. You can't get in trouble for reporting someone only to find out that they were fit to drive. But you could get into trouble for not reporting someone who ended up not fit to drive. Obviously, you've got to assess their ability to drive and provide treatment. What anything you can do for their medical conditions is going to make them a safer driver. And please utilise VicRoads resources and supports. So there's really an ongoing need to educate health professionals and drivers and carers about their obligations and about the options available to them. Thank you.