A senior doctor at Dubbo Hospital intends to ramp up a program equipping hundreds of medical professionals in rural and remote parts of Western NSW with the skills and confidence they need to save lives.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Director of the Department of Emergency Medicine, Dr David Lord Cowell, heads up Dubbo’s Emergency Medicine Education and Training (EMET) program. On Tuesday he announced the doubling of “education we provide over the next three years” after welcoming new funding. EMET, funded by the federal Department of Health, has received a windfall of $175,000 a year to 2020 from the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine.
READ MORE: Festive safety focus and New technology set to diagnose flu within hours.
“This program sees specialist emergency physicians to GPs and nurses providing workshops on emergency medical care in critical situations, giving doctors and nurses who don’t regularly deal with emergency situations necessary skills and confidence to deal with life-threatening situations,” Dr Lord Cowell said.
In the past two years, monthly EMET sessions have been held in Bourke, Lightning Ridge, Walgett, Mudgee, Wellington, Gilgandra, Narromine, and Cobar. “Currently, around 20 new staff are educated each month, which equates to 200 to 250 doctors, nurses and paramedics per year,” Dr Lord Cowell said.
“We plan to double the amount of education we provide over the next three years, and will also be starting to provide education to sites including Parkes, Forbes and Cowra. To do this we have enlisted the help of additional emergency physicians and will increase the number of doctors involved in providing this education between now and 2020.”
