CareFlight continues as the only Australian aero medical organisation to hold teaching accreditation with the three medical colleges covering the critical care fields of Anaesthetics, Emergency Medicine and Intensive Care. We regularly conduct the only pre-hospital trauma training course in NSW, training doctors in all aspects of emergency care medicine, such as extracting patients from accident scenes, teamwork skills for trauma medicine in the field, and how to use triage in a major incident setting. We are planning to expand our medical research and education programs and are currently in the process of implementing a rural trauma education program (MediSim) which will benefit all of New South Wales.
Under the CareFlight MediSim project, trauma training will travel to the frontline of regional, rural and remote communities. The CareFlight Community First Responder Training will extend to volunteer emergency services personnel in these locations (e.g. SES, VRA, RFS volunteers) who, so often, are first at the scene of road crash and other trauma incidents and where specialist help takes time to arrive.
The rationale behind this training is that these volunteers may be required to help sustain life during this period and indeed then assist medical staff in situations where there are multiple patients.
Programs such as these would simply not be possible without the generous support of the Community and organisations such as the James N. Kirby Foundation. We would like to sincerely thank the James N. Kirby Foundation for their generous donation of $13,240 in 2011. This enabled us to purchase a generator and do the electrical wiring for our mobile trauma training classroom.
This year is a major milestone for CareFlight as we recognise 25 years of saving lives in which there have been more than 25,000 responses to adult and child patients.
Scott Monaghan
Relationship Development Manager