CHSA

Airway Plan & Kit Dump

Truth of the matter is that most of the emergencies in my tiny rural hospital ED are relatively straightforward – injured bones, psychiatric emergencies, infections, cardiac conditions and so on.  Every now and then we are challenged with a patient requiring retrieval, but most of those need either meticulous monitoring, inotropic support or transfer to […]

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Safety in Resus – Use the Whiteboard!

There’s no doubt that for the small rural emergency department, a critically unwell patient can quickly overwhelm available resources.  Like many small rural hospitals in Australia, there is one doctor on call for emergency presentations, with the ward-based nursing staff (two in out location) responsible for ward care, assessment of outpatient attendances as well as

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Breach of Protocol

Coroners reports are interesting.  I think there are many reasons for Doctors to read reports from the Coroner, although am sometimes frustrated that such reports are a legal opinion, operating with total hindsight usually fail to acknowledge the impact of system issues or outside influences (classically the impact of a busy shift, difficult diagnosis etc) is an

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Airway Thrills

I’ve been asked to run an Airway Workshop for rural doctors at the annual RDASA Masterclass conference to be held in Adelaide 2015. Airway management is an essential skill for the rural clinician and one with which I am slightly obsessed… “Without an airway, you’ve got nothing!“ This is also an area of expertise that

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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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