New Toowoomba based RACQ LifeFlight doctors take part in intensive training week

An underwater helicopter, a wild house party, and a fatal car crash were all scenarios used to train two new critical care doctors to prepare them for their careers with the rescue organisation.

INTENSIVE TRAINING: Two new RACQ LifeFlight Rescue Critical Care Doctors are jumping on board Toowoomba's blue and yellow rescue choppers, ready to bring advanced medical care to sick or injured patients. Picture: RACQ LifeFlight

Two new critical care doctors have taken to the skies and joined the Toowoomba RACQ LifeFlight base, as details are revealed about the rescue organisation’s intensive training regimen.

Having worked in both a rural hospital and Toowoomba Hospital’s emergency department, recruit Dr Gabriel See had already seen the difference LifeFlight doctors make first-hand.

He was inspired to take on the retrieval challenge, after other rescue doctors spoke of their experiences and how they managed critical scenarios.

RACQ LifeFlight training. Picture: RACQ LifeFlight

After joining with the organisation, Dr See and 24 other doctors took part in an intensive training week at the LifeFlight Training Academy.

One of the most important parts of training is learning how to be winched from a chopper according to LifeFlight rescue chief aircrew officer Simon Gray.

“We’re introducing them to one of the methods that we can get them to a patient because at the end of the day, that’s fundamentally our main purpose, to get advanced medical care to a patient,” Mr Gray said.

The retrieval registrars were then strapped into a metal helicopter simulator and dunked underwater, in Helicopter Underwater Escape Training (HUET).

An underwater helicopter scenario was part of the gruelling training. Picture: RACQ LifeFlight

Back on land, the doctors were put through their paces in a series of simulated emergency scenes they could come across while on the job, at the Queensland Combined Emergency Services Academy at Whyte Island.

They were faced with some of the confronting realities of pre-hospital care, in scenarios including a wild house party where a child had ingested drugs, a worker injured in a confined space on a ship and a fatal car crash.

Originally published as New Toowoomba based RACQ LifeFlight doctors take part in intensive training week