Sandpiper Australia's vision is to close the trauma gap in rural and remote Australia via a National Rural Responder Network comprised of Sandpiper Clinician's, each equipped with a Sandpiper Bag to positively benefit their community.
How can we make this vision a reality?
Australia is known as ‘the lucky country’ and we are fortunate to have excellent state-based ambulance services, supported by transport and retrieval services.
However, Australia is a vast continent. With increasing rurality, there is often a significant delay in transporting patients to definitive care. Moreover, emergency responders in rural areas are limited in number and in scope of practice.
Sadly, critical illness does not respect geography. As a result, rural trauma victims may face significant delay in receiving effective pain relief or advanced medical interventions, whereas the same patient in a metropolitan area would likely receive prompt care.
Rural doctors, most especially Rural Generalists have skills not just in primary care but also in emergency medicine and in-patient hospital care. Some may have advanced skills in anaesthesia, obstetric or surgery. Rural Generalists are trained to deliver emergency care via their local health services but may also be called upon to respond in the prehospital environment. Outside of South Australia (see Current Rural Responder Networks) responses tend to be ad hoc, lacking consistency in tasking criteria, equipment, training and over-riding clinical governance.
Rural clinicians have appropriate skills and their expertise intersects with prehospital medicine. Moreover rural clinicians have a leadership role in their communities and involvement is often expected by rural communities.
By supporting rural clinicians with appropriate task-training reinforced by simulation, Sandpiper Australia envisages that the existing skills of rural clinicians can be contextualised to the challenging prehospital environment.