A new recruit at the Royal Flying Doctor Service South Eastern (RFDS SE) Section Dubbo Base has proven to be handy and thrifty after scouring city shops for materials to build an important training device that “vomits”.
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Dr Andy Caldin, 38, grew up in a “pretty rough area” of England, dropping out of school at 15 years of age and taking up carpentry.
It’s a skill set that has been put to good use since his arrival in Dubbo from England in September.
Senior medical officer at the base Dr Peter Brendt wanted a Suction Assisted Laryngoscopy Airway Decontamination Device (SALAD) for training doctors and nurses.
Dr Caldin volunteered to assemble the SALAD or “airway training mannequin that vomits”, using online instructions provided by the inventor of the device, American physician Dr James DuCanto.
Friendly staff in a variety of Dubbo stores helped Dr Caldin find necessary materials including a caravan shower pump that sits in the mannequin’s stomach.
Pretend vomit made from water and green food colouring is piped into the pump from a 50-litre plastic tub, used in most households for storage.
The mannequin’s head was an RFDS leftover that needed just a few adjustments.
Dr Caldin assembled the SALAD in the garage of his family’s Dubbo home. Costing about half its $1000 allocated budget, the device is now installed in the medical centre at the busy base at Dubbo City Regional Airport.
On Friday Dr Caldin said the SALAD allowed the base’s medical staff to “practice for the relatively uncommon but important scenario where a patient vomits whilst we’re putting them to sleep”.
He said vomit in the lungs was life threatening and “a difficult thing to train for”.
“We made this mannequin partly using plans that were posted on the internet in the medical community,” he said. “Those plans use a manual pump and we got an electric pump,” he said. “It creates an overwhelming vomit scenario which has been very useful for our team of doctors and nurses to train on.”
Dr Caldin said the assembling of the device was in keeping with a “strong commitment to training and education” in the RFDS.
“Our medical skills have to be constantly refreshed and updated and we are using our DIY SALAD simulator to do this work with RFDS SE medical staff at all levels,” he said.
The former carpenter who leapt into medicine after joining the ambulance service in England says working at the base is a “dream come true”.
Dr Caldin reports growing up on a “diet of Australian television” including the hit show The Flying Doctors.
