photos...

Left to right- Neale tries to pursuade Pete that it's not poisonous really

Lee demonstrates the approved SAAS headgear for incidents involving bees and alien attack.

Rescusi Annie begs Bridget to stop breaking her ribs.

(or if you want to be boring and serious (or even seriously boring)

1) Fit testing of masks

2) Bucket for containing saccarine spray

3) trying out the CPR assessment device

Conference kicks off to a bang (and shake rattle and roll)

Day 5- or day one of the conference.
An early start to the day- we had to be at the (huge) conference centre for 7.45 a.m. Before the main event started there was a chance to look around the stands in the conference hall, these were manned by the various sections we had visited over the last few days.
There were also several ambulances on display includng the new volunteer recruitment truck (they call them cars over here) which is very flash and is the new initiative to try and get more volunteers on board.
After some time looking over these we were called into the main conference room.
Ray Creen the CEO kicked off with a speech in which he attempted to say the word "carrot"more than 22 times- he suceeded but this was to bite him in the rear end later on in the day!
After calling his boss a vegetable (carrot!)- Neale Sutton did a short welcome for the next speaker and in the course of this mentioned Marla Station where 3 people cover all the shifts- (about 30 patients a year)- of course none of them were present as they were doing cover back home- more about this station later.
Next up was Mr Joske from the WA Red Cross, who had flown in specially to give his speech on Emergency Response in Disasters.
Then our guide of the first few days Lee got up and announced the next speaker who was the most dynamic he had ever seen and the subject was Cost Recovery. The speaker Aaron Chia is the director of finances and deputy CEO and he delivered the worst speech I have ever seen, complete with over text heavy power point slides which he read in a montone - right up to the point where he was interupted by an "earthquake". This was done really well with rumbling and crashing noises at extreme volume, smoke, fake flames, sirens and the works. At this point Neale Sutton (volunteer director) took over and used his army background to boss us all into our groups for the day.
Pete and I were in the dark blue group with our other guide of the week Chris as our "den mother"- yup he really did have a specially made up patch for his jacket saying that.
After getting all 30 on the bus and working out we were there we set off around the one way system for ten minutes- before ending up 100m back down the road from where we had started! At the railway yards we were tasked to move two of our number as patients from out of the carriages. Not so easy when the doors are four feet above the ground! The SAAS uses some complex manual handling techniques to avoid lifting and I wasn't familiar with all the straps and buckles and the ways they tied them up so stood back and watched- though I got some blank looks when I mentioned scoop stretchers as they don't used them. Having shifted our patients we swapped places with the other half of the groups and went to see the organisational process the railways use. Unfortunately this was really the last practical exercise we got to do although some other groups did some more exercises.
From the Railway we went out to the airport and visited SOT again where they had set up some displays of the SOT gear and the retrieval gear, off to the heli shed where the helicopter was coming in. It's a monster of a thing- think civilian Iroqoui. They can configure it to take 4 stretchers if they have to - but try not to as there's not room to work. Helicopters don't have the range for the outlying areas so the Royal Flying Doctors Service has airstrips on the main road for the West Coast- where road transport times are 6 hours or more (one way).
From the airport we went to the RAH where we had been programmedto do a tour of the emergency dept, burns unit and ICU which are all in the same block. But as the hospital was running at 110% full this had to be cancelled and we got a virtual power point tour instead in a lecture theatre which had flooded earlier in the day- who says it doesn't rain in Aussie- it threw it down in the morning.
We got dropped off back at the conference centre to go and get ready for the evenings entertainment.
The Conference dinner was pretty spectacular, the Police band played during the meal. i'm not personally really into the big band sound but they were very good- although maybe a bit too loud for conversation. I was on the same table as Ray Creen the director who came in for a good bit of stick during the evening when the Comedian (a drag Queen Elizabeth) arrived and started presenting the "Awards for Outstanding Performance"- which consisted of a medal- and a carrot!
A number of awards were given- one to a vollie who responded to a chest pain directly from the swimming pool- in her bikini (according to Her Maj the patient then had a heart attack at the sight), and one to two ladies on my table for vehicular starting methods- but what happens on cenference had better stay on conference.
Neale Sutton then got up to say that news was in that the Marla crew (remember them?) had had fourteen hour job- yup that's right 14 hours. Apparently two blokes had turned up at the local pub, unable to remember exactly where their car had gone off the road and saying their two mates were dead. The crew and Police headed off in search and found one dead patient and one nearly dead. Two hours along the road on the way to Coober Pedy they got a puncture so
they had to change the wheel by the road side before carrying on. They started at some time before 9 in the morning and finished up after 9 at night! Far OUT!

one large room, 400 volunteers, five out of ten sessions- two days of great fun!

Well it's been a busy few days.
On friday (day 4) we had a lie in then headed out to Fulham again where Dan and Mike gave us a run down on the bariatrics unit and how they go about moving the overweight. They no longer load a hospital bed into a furniture lorry! Now they have a special ambulance loaded with special gear and a trained team who go out and spend several hours moving a patient. The stretcher goes into the regular ambulance and the bariatrics crew go to the hospital to unload again. They have an inflatable matress and a hover matress which looks REALLY cool but we didn't get a chance to see it in action as the crew were called out on a job.
Then we met John who is a BIG ex New Yorker who is on the PS (psych) unit. he raqn us down on how they use de-escalation techniques, chemical and physical restraints on mental health patients. They will use Midazolam to sedate patients for as long as it takes to get them to hospital- as John said you really don't want some of these people coming round halfway through a 3 hour plane transport! He also showed us how to restrain a pateint on a stretcher with a net by strapping Pete down- all at no extra charge. They will also use wrist and ankle restraints.
Once we had finished at Fulham we had a free afternoon so after a very good seafood lunch we got dropped off at Glenelg on the coast for a wander and then took the tram back into town for a look at the shops.
In the evening we went down to the hall where conference registration was held and got more presents and a conference badge as well as a chance to meet the locals.

ne nah ne nah ne nah whoo whoo

Day 3
Road shift day at Prospect station
A bit of a hiccup over transport this morning meant I had to chase “my”crew down at a nursing home to join up with them. After leaving the patient at a smaller hospital they showed me over the vehicle- and later got “pinged” for taking more than 20 minutes to clear! The shift supervisor was happy with the explanation, but the service is trying to speed up clearance times, when you see ten ambulances lined up in the bay at the hospital you can see why but you do have to wonder why they don’t just page the crews to move on.
We then went quiet- yup the Q word, which gave me a bit of time to catch up on emails etc. Emily and Ian were most apologetic as Prospect is normally busy, but hey we all know how it goes when there's a third on shift. We took the opportunity to dash out and grab something to eat and then got put on break. The (union) rules state the crews get a 20 minute break every four hours- so true to ambulance form we nearly managed to finish eating before we got called out for the rest of the day. Once we got going we were on the road until virtually the end of the guys' shift at 5.00.
Every trip to the hospital I would be accosted by a different crew member off one of the other stations who would ask me where I was from and about the exchange and everyone was very friendly. The hospital system was a bit different to what we’re all used to in Dunedin. Triage is handled by one of the reception staff who will tell the crew where their patient is going (section A, B, waiting room etc), there is an orderly waiting by the door who will get a bed, make it up if needed and bring it over and several hospital staff will appear as if by magic to help with the patient transfer. Orderlys also bring patients down from the wards to the main door for transfer to PTS! Hidden out of sight from the main door is a nursing station for further handover of the less serious cases and then the patient is left with no hanging around- serious cases get handed over to a doctor at resus- also staffed by lots of people at time of transfer.
The most notable job of the day was a call as we left the RAH (Royal Adelaide Hospital) to go to Prospect station where a man had turned up saying that the aliens had told him to kill an ambulance officer- oh yes SAPOL (Police) were on the way! As you can imagine we were full of enthusiasm for this job and rushed there as quickly as we could, commenting how lucky it was that the other crew were fifteen minutes into their break (inside the station) and so would not have to walk out of the building and deal with this…..gentleman! So we were MOST upset when a higher priority call came in and we had to dash past the station (and attending Police) with the lights and sirens going off to the other job- what a shame and we had SO hoped to meet him.
Wayne (the eastern area shift leader) came back to pick me up and kindly gave me a Claire a quick tour of the city which has some impressive architecture and that was it for another day- apart from tea of course (I can assure you no indigenous species died to feed me)

catching up with the last few days action

Day two- busy busy.
A stunning meal at the heartily recommended Woolshed last night (it has one of those bucking bulls- not in action- boo shame). We met the Director for the Rural areas Neale S- who is highly entertaining- I didn’t quite catch the whole of his story about running over a kangaroo but the one about the dangling buffalo gave us all a laugh. I had kangaroo steak- ok I’m not normally into eating unique indigenous fauna - but hey it just had to be done sometime.
Day two kicked off at the more reasonable time of 8.30- except that of course we’re all still working to good old NZ time and all woke up anywhere between 4.00 am and 6.30 am.
First up we went to the E.O.C at HQ. After squirting our hands with the obligatory alcohol disinfectant we were introduced to the day’s Duty Manager Steve and Comms room manager Lee and given a tour of the room (which is not small!). The E.O.C. runs comms for the whole State and there were about 6 call takers in with spaces for another four to come in for busy times! Calls go through to North and South dispatchers for the city as well as to a rural dispatchers. Also in the comms room are an ECP (Extended Care paramedic) who gives advice over the phone to callers and a trouble shooter who takes care of notifying Police etc when needed.
The SAAS system is all done by radio call ins- no MDT’s and not even any buttons to push on the radio so you had better believe the dispatchers are BUSY. One thing we all noticed was the radio “chatter” as crews are given all their job details over the air (pager only gives them the address or initial area to head to, a map reference and category), crews call in on response, location, arrival at hospital, clearance and on station. As they're on a Government digitall radio channel which is meant to be secure they give out names, addresses and key locations on air which we all found very strange.
I sat in with Natalie on dispatch for Northern city for a while and couldn’t even try to keep up with her lightening fingers! As crews come in she logs their times in as well as passing on the messages from the call takers- she also has to keep in her head the location of ambulances in her area at all times so she can work out who to dispatch where- no AVL for these guys as yet! All the dispatchers have a printed city map with stations marked on but they also have access to Google maps on one of their three computer screens. Natalie didn’t seem to bother too much with Google but John one of the rural dispatchers was using his to decide which station would get to a rural job more quickly.
After ten minutes of being blown away by how Natalie coped with it all (she had ten ambulances on one screen and six on jobs on the other) I was moved on to see what the call takers were up to. Call takers for SAAS do not have any road experience and work on the PROQA codes we all know and love. As Luke worked his way through the questions the computer would throw up the next set for him to ask. Calls come in from all over the State and are allocated to whoever has been sitting around the longest. I got to sit in on a simple abdo pain and a more difficult call- unfortunately we ran out of time and I had to leave while caller CPR (as taught by Luke) was in progress, the ambulance had just pulled up outside the door- the outcome is unknown.
From the E.O.C. we headed out to Fulham which houses stores, the tech guys and fleet management. The “comms engineering” section was quite something. The team lead by Paul do all the in house electronics for the State. This includes unpacking all the training maniquins and making sure they are working properly before they go out to stations, repairing any that get broken, fixing pagers, and sorting out cellphones, sat phones and radios. To welcome us to the section they had set up a partially put together maniquin on the table which was breathing - veeerry sloowwly.
From there we went and had a look at stores- which was a storeroom- but bigger. All the stores for the State are dispatched from here- either by bus to the rural areas or by the storesmen for the city.
Then we popped into the workshop for the fleet which has six or so hoists (mostly occupied). Not only the vehicles get serviced but the stretchers are also checked out every six months.
A quick stop for a good café lunch and then we headed down to Flinders Uni to see the education unit. Pete and I were travelling with Chris who had been taking a lot of stick from Lee all day about being late at each venue (we‘re mostly talking a few minutes only but Lee is a bit particular), so of course on the way to Flinders Chris got directionally challenged (he’s not from around here you know) after Lee shot ahead of us. But we all rallied round and I think we managed to nearly convince Lee we had taken a tiki tour to the beach on the way out.
We met the whole education team in the tea room and toured the Department. The SAAS career path is quite different to St John. Volunteers go through Cert 2 (PHEC plus a bit) in 3 to 6 (ish) months and then follow it up with Cert 4 (another 3- 6 ish months) which is roughly equivalent to Nat Cert but gives them more drugs to use BUT they have to call up and consult before they use them.
The education team are currently reviewing their training programme to be extended over a six year period to help retain volunteers for longer.
Crocodile and kangaroo for tea tonight!

I'll try and post some photos but I've been having a few issues getting them to upload so keep watching this space.

on shift in Adelaide

Well after a hectic day yesterday- more on this later- I'm now on shift in Adelaide at Prospect Station. As is traditional when there is a third on there's been only one job since seven o' clock - I was meant to start at eight but hiccups in getting us all to our stations meant that we passed "my" ambulance at 8.15 on their way to a job- but we caught up so here I am on statiopn- we''ll be off out in a sec to get some luch so will log in later with all the not so gruesome details TTFN

here we are!!

Well day one is drawing towards meal time- phew! It’s been pretty hectic.
Yesterdays’ flight was uneventful but I wished I’d had the camera available for some photos while we were flying up Dunedin harbour in glorious sunlight (just to prove we have some of course), an hour in Wellington then off to overnight in Auckland meeting up with Pete one of the other exchangees on the way.
Five o’clock is DEFINITELY too early to be civilised but the taxi was at 5.45 so it haqd to be done (urgh!). At the airport we picked up first Bridget and then Claire- easy to pick toting her St John bag. Despite the other’s claims to excessive packing my bag is easily the heaviest so now I will have to justify that by doing some outdoor activities in my last week!
After last night’s 1 hour flight from Wellington to Auckland (which took 45 minutes) the 4.55 minute Auckland to Adelaide taking over 5 hours was a disappointment. The weather on arrival wet and windy but warm enough.
We were met by Lee and Chris- well Claire was then they had to wait for me and Bridget to pursuade the Maf brigade that we were not importing noxious species into the country- but we got there in the end.
Lee is in charge of the Western Rural region from Whyalla out to the Nullabor while Chris has the Southern Rural region. After dropping our bags at our accomodation they took us on a drive through the city for lunch then on to HQ for SAAS. He service runs out of a three storey building with the EACC on the top floor (that’s tomorrow’s visit), admin on the lower and various management folks in the middle. We were introduced to lots of people but by now being in a stupefied state (5.00am translates to 3.00am Adelaide time!) I can’t remember who everyone was. But Cindy (clinical quality management) introduced us to the Qcpr maniquin and let us have a play- the others had seen this beast before but for those that haven’t you can link a rescusi annie up to a defib and it will tell what you are doing wrong in your CPR- apparently it works on real people too- probably best to kick the family out of the room while it picks holes in your technique at a CA tho!
Neale then gave us our fitness test (no not climbing three flights of stairs- how to correctly fit a P2 mask), after sitting with our heads in a see thru bucket and having sweet stuff squirted on us we then had to fit a mask and make sure we couldn’t smell the saccharine with the mask on. Health staff in SA are tested on their ability once a year and have to pass.
Lee and Chris gave us an overview of the areas we’ll be heading out to- Pete gets the Nullabor and they burst out laughing when they found out who my host is going to be- hmmm! We also got a run down on how the service runs with their volunteer and career stations. All really interesting.
Tomorrow- is another day but there’s quite a few places to go to!

only an hour and a half to go!

Just enjoying the spring sunshine before heading off to the airport. One huge heavy bag sitting in the living room and another extremely heavy one for hand luggage- how did we used to manage in the days before electronic equipment? And how do we now cope with the fact each item has it's own blasted charger! I had to find another wee bag just to put all the cables in- and I still have some tucked away goodness knows where- it's going to be a nightmare charging stuff up!
Apparently you can take two bags to Aussie from NZ now- but not if you have to make a local flight first. Maybe that's just as well as it stops me overloading myself anymore.
My first reccommendation to the uniform committee (next time they're asking) is MAKE IT ALL LESS BULKY AND LIGHTER!
Back off to the sunshine again- the solar heating sensor says it's 65oc on the roof!

Not nearly ready to go yet

Well I head out of sunny Dunedin for a) windy Wellington followed by b) Awful Auckland tomorrow- so I really need to be packing not sitting at the computer doing this! Stuff all over the living room and trying to work out how to fit 3 uniform shirts, 2 uniform trousers, 1 uniform jacket (and it's detachable sleeves), 1 road coat (and the horrible stiff reflective strip that says AMBULANCE), 1 fluoro vest (and the horrible stiff reflective strip that says AMBULANCE) plus a pair of boots PLUS the stuff I want to take for my week going solo. Looks like the climbing helmet may have to stay behind, along with the caving overalls and bouyancy aid! Mustn't forget the camera, laptop etc etc - or passport and REALLY mustn't forget to get some Aussie dollars out tomorrow- which was this week's job but everything got too hectic!
Still have to download the old pics off the camera so I have some space on it and make sure all the batteries are charged- phew!
No panic!

So why is anyone at all surprised by this?

Driver hits parked ambulance with sirens blaring
Posted Sun Aug 16, 2009 1:14pm AEST
Map: Adelaide 5000
An alleged drink driver has collided with a parked ambulance that had its emergency lights flashing and sirens sounding in suburban Adelaide.
Police say the 22-year-old man's car hit the ambulance on Marion Road at Plympton Park just after 2:00 am ACST.
They say the car crossed the median strip and struck the front fence of a home.
The Ascot Park man allegedly recorded a blood alcohol reading of 0.187.
He has lost his probationary licence and faces charges including drink driving.

I'm more surprised we don't get it happening more often given the way somedrivers seem unable to see the lights in the rear view mirror or hear the sirens coming from somewhere close to their rear end.

Getting ready to go across the ditch

Hi all, well I now have my timetable for the Aussie trip and it's pretty full on. So for those that have been asking here's a run down:-
Head up to Auckland on the 24th and meet up with the other participants. Fly over to Adelaide on the 25th arrive 10.30ish, get fitted for masks, check in and afternoon free followed by evening dinner with SAAS Managers.
26th- Tour of... EOC, Support services, Special Operations at Adelaide airport, Education Services Unit ... phew.
27th Day on shift at Prospect Station.
28th Visit ATS complex (that's what it says- dunno what ATS stands for- Ambulance Transport Services maybe?). Free afternoon followed by State Volunteer Conference.
29th SVC
30th SVC to 3.00pm followed by travel to Barossa valley (1 and a half hours).http://maps.google.com/
31st Tour of Barossa, Blanchetown, Waikerie and off to Morgan. Morgan team training.
1st Road shift in Berri. Swan Reach team training.
2nd Tour of Murray Mallee. Pinnaroo team training.
3rd Travel to Flinders Uni.
4th Free day
5th Free day at Morgan.
6th Adelaide, farewell meal.
7th End of exchange followed by a week doing my own thing.