A/Prof. Gayle Christie1
1St John Ambulance WA, Perth, Australia
Biography:
UK trained FACEM with dual accreditation in Emergency and Pre-hospital Medicine, with over 20-years experience in both fields and multiple post graduate qualifications and fellowships in both disciplines.
Dedicated to improving the delivery of pre-hospital care to our communities through excellence in training, education and clinical standards in this space.
Abstract:
Advanced airway management; specifically Pre-Hospital Emergency Anaesthesia is a HALO skill limited to Critical Care Paramedics (CCP) within St John Ambulance WA.
However, time to intervention on scene can be improved by optimisation of a patient's respiratory and haemodynamic status prior to arrival of the CCP crew.
A Pre-Hospital Anaesthesia Assist Course was developed and implemented by SJAWA which aimed to provide education on the indications for PHEA, how to prepare and optimise a patient for the procedure, familiarisation with CCP equipment, procedures and checklists, and human factors around being an active team member to facilitate smooth processes during the procedure.
Four hour long workshop sessions were facilitated by the Medical Director and two current practicing CCPs. Sessions were supplemented by a comprehensive supporting coursebook which was provided as pre-reading.
Course consisted of an interactive teaching session, equipment familiarisation workshop and practical sessions. The latter consisted of SIMEXs where participants were asked to manage and optimise a patient, provide an IMIST handover to the CCP crew, and participate in the PHEA.
Feedback from participants is that they found the session highly informative and engaging and feel more confident in how to recognise, optimise and prepare patients for PHEA.
Additionally they felt that going forward they would be able to participate more actively as a productive team member, having developed a greater understanding of the processes involved and effective utilisation of the CCP checklists.
Participants were awarded 4 hours of CPD for participating.