Emergency service volunteers, doctors and nurses across NSW will benefit from an innovative program which will bring trauma training to their towns, thanks to Westmead-based aeromedical charity CareFlight.

The mobile education unit is the latest program being undertaken by CareFlight, these days a national aeromedical service that also operates the rapid-response trauma service from its base in the grounds of Westmead Hospital; the Top End Aeromedical Service for the NT Government from bases at Darwin, Katherine and Gove; the provision of doctors to the NSW Ambulance Service aeromedical bases at Bankstown; plus its CareFlight International Air Ambulance which provides doctors and nurses flying patients on interstate and international missions from bases at Perth, Darwin, Cairns and Sydney.

The MediSim program was successfully trialled at Kempsey, on the NSW Mid-Coast, in late March.

It will next be put to use at Lismore, on the Far North Coast, in June in a program involving training to that region’s doctors and nurses as well as emergency services volunteers.

At Kempsey, it was successfully presented to a dozen men and women having up to 25 years of experience as emergency service volunteers, where their curiosity to turn up for two nights of training was quickly replaced by enthusiastic support.

Such was the impact of CareFlight’s initial rollout of a pioneering MediSim program to rural communities the volunteers now want more of this innovative, hands-on, training.

Supported by a grant from Kempsey Macleay RSL Club, CareFlight staged the charity’s first MediSim project.

Feedback from the volunteers to CareFlight’s medical education manager, Dr Ken Harrison, was unanimous – his mix of practice and theory was relevant and gave them a new level of understanding in how to better support ambulance officers and medical teams at crash scenes … and importantly practical experience in how to manage patients with life-threatening injuries in those vital minutes before specialist medical help arrives.

“It was great for our instructors to see how these seasoned volunteers embraced the lessons from our medical experience as an add-on to their first aid knowledge and emergency experience,” Dr Harrison said.

“All the participants said it was a highly valuable experience.”

Under the CareFlight MediSim project, trauma training will travel to the frontline of regional, rural and remote communities where hospital staff, the doctors and nurses, is called on to give early treatment to severely injured patients.

Equally important, the CareFlight MediSim training will extend to volunteer emergency services personnel in these locations who, so often, are first at the scene of road crash and other trauma incidents … and where specialist help takes time to arrive.

MediSim is now able to bring expert training out to those who need it, not to just the few who are able to find the time and cost needed to travel to education centres in capital cities to receive it.

CareFlight’s MediSim will visit 13 regional NSW centres in the first year and a similar number throughout 2012.

Kempsey was chosen for the pilot project because of the funding allocated by Kempsey RSL Club and the generous support which the Mid-Coast community has provided over the past four years to other CareFlight medical treatment services, trauma research and education through the region’s “Local Heroes” IGA stores initiative.

Over the next year MediSim will head to Lismore, Coffs Harbour, Parkes, Forbes, Albury and the Berrigan Shire, Scone, Muswellbrook, Goulburn and Young.

Beyond the construction and equipment investment, the cost of staging the full training program at each location is over $20,000 – to deliver courses to doctors and nurses as well as to emergency service volunteers.

Thanks to donations from caring individuals and businesses, and understanding registered clubs, CareFlight’s expert doctor and nurse educators use the latest life-like simulators in our mobile program to bring this much-needed training direct to those who can benefit most from it.

The heart of the program is a just-completed $300,000 “box”, the unique MediSim is constructed in the form of an air conditioned aluminium container and transported on CareFlight’s truck, equipped with audio-visual equipment, instructor control room and state-of-the-art patient simulators.

CareFlight is seeking additional support from individuals, businesses, registered clubs, community-based organisations and foundations to help offer the MediSim program to rural, regional and remote communities.

To find out more about this CareFlight program please email medisim@careflight.org while donation details and further information is available on the charity’s web site www.careflight.org