The Emergency Medicine, Education and Training (EMET) program has been running now in the Darling Downs Hospital and Health Service (DDHHS) since February 2015. Training is provided weekly by 2 emergency specialists from Toowoomba traveling to a rural site. Each of the hospitals is visited in turn. Sessions include online pre-learning, facilitated content teaching and case discussions, skills sessions and simulations. The sessions focus on one subject each time (eg: airway, respiratory, trauma). Each session concludes with team based multidisciplinary scenario training using both role play patients and a simulation manikin. Where possible these scenarios are run in the rural emergency department to enable participants to learn in their own environments, and with their usual work teams.
Emergency Medicine, Education and Training (EMET)
Summary
Aim
The EMET program in Toowoomba was developed to provide onsite multidisciplinary emergency training in rural emergency departments. The aims of the program are to;
- Standardise the care across our health service
- Improve interpersonal teamwork
- Develop and strengthen relationships between Toowoomba Hospital and our 18 rural hospitals
Benefits
- Provides scenario based education in the usual work location and environment
- Enables greater understanding of the rural context
Background
The DDHHS has a large regional Hospital, Toowoomba, and 18 smaller rural hospitals. Emergency presentations in Toowoomba are approximately 50,000 per year and it is staffed by 12 FTE Emergency Consultants. The rural hospitals see over 100,000 emergency presentations per year and there were no specialist emergency doctors working in these hospitals when the EMET program started.
Solutions Implemented
During the last 2 years the HHS has run 120 sessions, and had over 1000 participants (doctors, nurses, students, ambulance officers) and driven over 22,000 kilometres to provide training. All sessions are evaluated and the data shows high satisfaction and learning needs met.
