Clarkster

When I started in Melbourne Australia in 1997, I was an Ambulance Officer (EMT-, I was fortunate enough to be posted on the outskirts of town, were we had 15-20minute transport times and at least 15 minutes before the Mobile Intensive Care Para's (MICA) turned up. In Melbourne, they duel respond MICA to all Code 1 (Cardiac, SOB, MVA, Trauma), so you had you butt hanging out trying to get through your basic care before they turned up. If your BLS, O2, Obs, Monitor, Pulse Ox, etc etc wasn't done, they would write you up, regardless how green you were. These guys were feared by all students on the road. In the inner city this happened as well, except you had MICA chasing you up the road and when you got there they would give you a rocket for not getting you BLS done in 90 secs. Crazy Stuff. By the time I did MICA, things have changed some what. I always say to the guys, take your time or you will one day miss something so obvious you will kick yourself for weeks over it. But there is more...these MICA guys would turn out to a call, single truck response, and if it wasn't an Intensive Care job, they would call control and get a AO car to come and transport so they were not tied up doing shite. Glad I have moved on from there!!

Gidday, We are situated in Ayers Rock (Yulara) which is 450 km from the nearest Major Hospital, which is really only an 18 Medical Bed, 4 Resus Bay Emergency Department. The Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) have a small but very well equip Clinic / Emergency Dept with 2 Resus Beds and 2 medical beds. We continually get road trauma with tourists driving on nice roads with open speed limits, but for some reason they keep rolling their cars and campers. It is nothing for us to travel 2 hours out to a job at high speed, treat the patients, organize Aero Med or load to go back 2 hours to Ayers Rock Medical to stabilize and prepare for Aero Med from there. On New Years Day, I traveled out 2 hours to a roll over with 4 German tourists driving on Australian roads for the first time. They saw a Goanna (large lizard) on the road, and swerved to miss it. They rolled 3 times and all of them got out without one injury. When I was taking a history, they were very emotional. I asked them what was wrong, they told me this is the second time in a week that they should have been dead. They went on to tell me that at 0730hrs on Boxing Day (Dec 26th) they got on a small ferry from Phi Phi Island in Thailand and were taken to the mainland to catch a flight to Australia. At 0830hrs, a huge wave devastated the island and killed 250. :shock: I told them to go buy a Lotto ticket. Sorry, a little off the story.