Wide Bay-Burnett welcomes new RACQ LifeFlight Rescue doctor

A rescue chopper team gives an insiders’ view of the intense training doctors undertake to join LifeFlight with one medico revealing how he will overcome his own fear to help those in need.

The Wide Bay Burnett has welcomed the newest addition to the lifesaving RACQ LifeFlight team, with Dr Daniel Ballantine joining the Bundaberg helicopter base crew.

Dr Ballantine got his first taste of the region when he flew to Mundubbera to assist a toddler reportedly bitten by a snake in her own backyard.

However, the inaugural trip was not Dr Ballantine’s first introduction to rural healthcare, with the RACQ LifeFlight sharing his keen interest in rural generalist medicine and anaesthetics.

“I think the goal of retrieval medicine is to provide a specialist service to some of these more regional areas and I just absolutely wanted to be a part of that, so here I am,” he said.

In preparation for a role with the essential crew, Dr Ballantine not only had to undergo intense training at the LifeFlight training academy, he also had to tackle his own fears head on.

Dr Daniel Ballantine during his training. Picture: RACQ LifeFlight.

“I’m very excited for winching. I kind of have this weird fear of heights but I feel like I could conquer it, if I’m dangling outside of an aircraft so I’m ready to go,” he said.

As part of his training, Dr Ballantine had to undergo Helicopter Underwater Escape Training (HUET), a vital skill if the worst were to happen during a rescue and a chopper crashed into the water.

Dr Daniel Ballantine has joined the Bundaberg-based RACQ LifeFlight crew. Image credit: RACQ LifeFlight.

LifeFlight HUET manager Mick Dowling said the likelihood of such a terrifying scenario was low, but emphasised the necessity of the skill.

“If the occupants have been trained in HUET, they have life skills and an instinctive skill set that they can put into play to get themselves out,” Mr Dowling said.

“In most cases occupants will survive the impact initially.

“It’s when the aircraft is underwater, they’re getting disoriented with the water, and it’s all about giving the skills to exit the aircraft using references, so the whole time they know exactly where they are in that machine.”

Dr Ballantine is of 26 new doctors to join the LifeFlight team across the country.

The doctors underwent training for every situation, undergoing realistic, worst-case scenario simulations at the Queensland Combined Emergency Services Academy at Whyte Island.

Dr Ballantine underwent winching training as part of his intensive preparation for the role. Image credit: RACQ LifeFlight.

LifeFlight chief aircrew officer Matt O’Rourke, said the exercises built on the doctors’ medical training to provide specialist lifesaving skills needed to reach the most remote of patients.

“We take them through a range of different winch scenarios; single winch, double winch, stretcher winch, of which they may use once in the field,” he said.

“The scenarios are very much tailored to the base they would be at. So that can be over land, they may be winching 100 feet to a motorbike accident, it could be 250 feet into a ravine, to ocean tasks which may be to a large container vessel, a passenger cruise ship where we have a critical patient, or an injured patient and they need to retrieve them back into the aircraft.”

In the past twelve months alone, the Bundaberg-based RACQ LifeFlight team have shown how necessary their work is, recording 410 rescues and helping 262 people across the state.