Pre-Hospital

All About That (MedSTAR) Base

Readers of the blog will know that I spent the second half of the year with MedSTAR, South Australia’s retrieval service and part of SA Ambulance Service (SAAS). As a rural doctor I am usually a user of this service. It’s taken a few years after being invited to coordinate time off to arrange time out of practice […]

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Critically Ill Airway

I am just putting final touches to the “Being Expert Enough” session for the forthcoming Critical Ill Airway Course to be held at The Alfred Hospital in Melbourne, May 7-8th 2015. The course is being convened by that powerhouse of energy, Dr Chris Nickson of LITFL, smacc & RAGE podcast fame. Co-conspirators include external collaborators like Scott

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Updated RERN Action Cards

I’ve been playing around with cognitive aids such as checklists and action cards for a couple of years (some are available via the RESOURCES section of this site or RURALDOCTORS.NET. Most of these were designed for handing off to nursing staff in the rural ED, partly to mitigate against the phenomenon of people disappearing off to the ‘big

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Airway Classics – A Love Supreme?

Many people are eagerly awaiting the release of the new Difficult Airway Society UK (DAS UK) guidelines, in the wake of their recent Annual Scientific Meeting. Some recommendations are available HERE and include : acceptance of gentle mask ventilation during RSI use of videolaryngoscopy as an option in initial intubation plan apnoeic diffusion oxygenation didactic

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Keeping it all together…

Like most clinicians, my time spent in anaesthesia drilled me in the importance of performing routine pre-anaesthetic machine checks, of keeping the workspace tidy and paying meticulous attention to detail. ‘ These lessons translate well into other areas of practice – at the start of every on call period in emergency, I check the resus

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