Rural Medicine Australia is nearly here!

Well Rural Medicine Australia 2012 to be held in Fremantle, WA is nearly here. I’ve got 15 mins to talk about my topic of difficult airways and rural docs, which isn’t much. I’ll try and keep it sensible…

So in the true spirit of FOAMed, here’s a video on an affordable ‘Rural GP toolkit’. I think that my paper adequately demonstrates that not all rural GP-anaesthetists have access to the appropriate equipment to manage a difficult airway, especially in a challenging environment with no specialist backup.

This toolkit makes some suggestions on affordable equipment for doctors in the bush.

https://vimeo.com/51654548

What then is the appropriate kit? Well, there’s a plethora of devices out there. Selection of any device needs to be a compromise of affordability and effectiveness.

For example, there are excellent videolaryngoscopes systems out there, that really are superb – but they’ll come in at around A$15K. A small rural hospital cannot afford these. Some of the less expensive devices are both functional and affordable.

But one needs to choose wisely. As one astute respondent to my 2012 survey stated “a good familiarity with a small range of commonly used options is much more efficient and safer to organise, find, assemble, replace, troubleshoot than a supermarket shelf full of toys from the sales reps”.

Have a look at the video and make up your own minds.

Hopefully I will see you a few of you at RMA2012…I’ll be the one with the @KangarooBeach T-shirt…

Other resources

Rural Medicine Australia (#RMA 2012)

ANZCA PS 56 “Guidelines on Equipment to manage a Difficult Airway”

Rural GP-Anaesthetists – 2012 Survey paper

Video summary of 2012 survey

Vimeo presentation for RMA2012

EM-Crit discussion on “Needle or Knife?

BroomeDocs on ‘Can’t Intubate, Can’t Ventilate – the low down on code brown

Andy Heard’s videos on CICV

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