Victorian Remote Area Nurse Update Program 2012 and Alpine Medicine Presentations

In July last year I attended the 2011 Emergency Management Conference in Melbourne and struck up a conversation with the Ambulance Victoria representative who was responsible for educational updates for the Victorian Remote Area Nurses, a group of remarkable (mostly) women who work in small bush hospitals and remote towns and are the medical first responders for their community. It seemed that there were some commonalities between the work that RANs do and the work that ski patrollers do as first responders in remote locations, and I offered (by way of networking) to assist with the annual update program for the RANs.

This is run annually as a two day program in both May and June, and the RANs are given a number of update lectures as well as rotating their way through a series of practical competencies designed to refresh their skills and assess their competency to practise these skills in a diverse range of areas. RANs must successfully complete some workbook materials prior to attending the Update. The workstations are manned by a very dedicated, knowledgeable and experienced group of (mainly) rural ambulance officers and midwives, and all materials are based on an extensive Learning Support and Resource Material package and the splendidly comprehensive Remote Area Nurses Emergency Guidelines (available from http://www.ambulance.vic.gov.au/Media/docs/RAN%20Guidelines-81ae0568-940d-404d-acd9-aae84eeeea0c-2.PDF). These are a great resource, and I have used them myself for training purposes.

The workstations cover:
1. Obstetric Emergencies
2. Respiratory Emergencies and Airway Management (Adult)
3. Altered Conscious States and Medical Emergencies (Adult)
4. Trauma (Adult)
5. Cardiac Emergencies (Adult) including CPR and DCCS (AED)
6. Paediatric Emergencies (Trauma/Cardiac) including CPR and DCCS (AED)
7. Paediatric Medical Emergencies (including Respiratory)
8. Splinting and Environmental Emergencies.

I was honoured to be invited to give a lecture to the RANs at each of the updates and to attend one of workstation sessions as an observer.

After discussions with the coordinator, the lecture I gave at the first update program covered Ski Patrol First Aid training and medications, ski resort demographics and injury profile, polar medicine training in Norway, hypothermia and local cold injuries and altitude illness. This involved a large amount of preparation, but skimming through the first sections and concentrating on the cold injuries and altitude illness I was able to fit it into the 45 minute allocation.

Shortly before the second session I received the feedback that the RANs found the presentation interesting but would have liked more material on hypothermia. I had presented all the existing material on hypothermia and local cold injuries in full so the only way to achieve this was to add extra material at the cost of the other areas in the presentation. The revamped presentation dealt only with these issues, which was a pity from my perspective, as a lot of work went into the other material, but I guess there is always hope that one will be able to use it on another occasion.

I have made the three versions available from Dropbox as a resource (but if any of this material is used due acknowledgment should be given to the sources as I have done at the end of the presentation):

Version 1 (original version covering all topics [129 slides]):
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/30234302/RAN_Alpine_Med_RC_2012.pdf

Version 2: (expanded version covering all topics [174 slides])
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/30234302/RAN_Alpine_Med_RC_2012_v2.pdf

Version 3: (abridged version covering only hypothermia and local cold injuries [90 slides]): https://dl.dropbox.com/u/30234302/RAN_Cold_Injuries_RC_2012.pdf