CareFlight demonstration challenges future doctors in Australian Medical Students’ Association conference

Young aspiring doctors have been exposed to the chaotic realities of medicine in the Territory.

Dr James hooper and Jayne Sheppard at the CareFlight training day demonstrating to Australian medical students as part of the AMSA Rural Health summit at Fort Hill Parkland, Darwin

A car crash victim, a patient spurting blood and a faulty breathing tube while flying through the air — that is what James Hooper would describe as a “bad day”.

Yet this is exactly what CareFlight doctors said young doctors needed to prepare for if they wanted to join the Northern Territory’s air ambulance network.

“We train for the worst days you can imagine … otherwise the first time you’re doing it will be for real,” Dr Hooper said.

On Saturday, 70 medical students from across the country took part in a CareFlight demonstration at Fort Hill Parkland, as part of Darwin’s first ever Australian Medical Students’ Association conference.

Top row: Trudy Guiney, Dean Blackney, Dr James Hooper, Dr Joseph Poxon and Jaye Sheppard Bottom row: Ella Touhy, Dr Sean Heagney, Dr Bhusan joshi and Olivia Bigham at the CareFlight training for the Australian medical students as part of the AMSA Rural Health summit at Fort Hill Parkland, Darwin

Dr Hooper and fellow CareFlight workers ran the aspiring doctors through the car crash, chopper intubation, and haemorrhaging simulations.

“We’re teaching them skills that will save a life,” Dr Hooper said.

“We take a hospital to the patient, we take critical care to the patient.”

Dr Hooper said it would be at least another five to 10 years before any of the students would be ready to join the CareFlight team, but the emergency responders were hopeful for the doctors of the future.

Tish Sivagnanan, Minhal Gill and Shreya Mago medical students demonstrate CPR and Emergency skills at the CareFlight training center as part of the AMSA Rural Health summit at Fort Hill Parkland, Darwin

He said the Territory’s levels of chronic kidney, renal, heart diseases and trauma like nowhere else due to the degree of inequality.

“We commonly go very, very remote and they’ve had an injury where it might potentially be hours before any formal healthcare gets there,” Dr Hooper said.

CareFlight provides free training to Australian medical students as part of the AMSA Rural Health summit at Fort Hill Parkland, Darwin

“And it’s a lot of different illnesses, diseases, injuries that you just wouldn’t see somewhere else.”

Flight nurse Jane Sheppard agreed working in the Territory exposed her to the grim realities of “health care equity”.

Ms Sheppard said she had treated patients as young as 20, with conditions usually seen in “70, 80 and 90-year-olds”.

CareFlight provides free training to Australian medical students as part of the AMSA Rural Health summit at Fort Hill Parkland, Darwin

She has spent eight of her 23 years as a nurse in the skies, joining the CareFlight team after work in New Zealand and Papua New Guinea.

“It’s one of those jobs you fall into,” Ms Sheppard said.

James Cook University fifth-year medical student Tish Sivagnanan hoped the Darwin conference would inspire future doctors to embrace “tropical medicine”.

Tish Sivagnanan and Shreya Mago medical students demonstrate Airway Management Skills at the CareFlight training center as part of the AMSA Rural Health summit at Fort Hill Parkland, Darwin

The AMSA president said since two-thirds of the students were from down south, the conference would challenge the their ideas about medicine.

“Don’t just treat the disease, but the patient,” she said.

“It’s about the impact you can have, it’s the small changes in rural communities that can have such a big change.”