Posted in Retrievals on Aug 6th, 2010
It’s module changeover time again and I’ve migrated to a new job. If you remember back to February last year I had much to tell you about retrieval medicine, and soon to be again. I’ve taken on another 6 month term with MedSTAR, only this time as a “Fellow”. This means more responsibility and some [...]
Posted in Retrievals on Jul 2nd, 2009
Back to references rather than literal titles again. Credit to Blur this time. Milestones come in all forms, the easiest to acknowledge are numerical ones. A few days ago I made my retrieval “ton”. It didn’t seem so long ago that I was doing my first few and it all seemed very exciting. Now, after [...]
Posted in Retrievals on Jun 20th, 2009
Both metaphorically and literally. Over the past month or so, I have been in a bit of a slump at work. Many of the jobs we do are interesting both in terms of clinical and logistical aspects. It also has seen us travel to some diverse parts of the state. Unfortunately this has not been [...]
Posted in Retrievals on Jun 18th, 2009
Not quite on the scale of the Inaugural Presidential speech, but still fairly daunting. Today it was the turn of MedSTAR to present to the weekly Retrieval community teleconference. There are a number of organisations similar to ours around Australia including CareFlight and Adult Retrievals Victoria. Since these services are based primarily in state capitals, [...]
Posted in Retrievals on Apr 2nd, 2009
I know it’s not “the done thing” to advertise, but I couldn’t let the opportunity for a little self-publicity pass. Yesterday we were tasked as a rapid response to Snowtown where a mentally-disturbed man had injured a number of people. Two patients had been hit-and-run by the man’s pickup truck and he had also stabbed [...]
Posted in Retrievals on Mar 30th, 2009
After a protracted delay since the previous instalment, here is the final posting in this series about what our job entails. This time I will cover the delivery stage of a retrieval which forms the transfer of care to a receiving centre and the end of our involvement. On the way, we have already done [...]
Posted in Retrievals on Mar 12th, 2009
High speed, sleep deprivation and motor vehicles. Last night I had a very busy shift with 2 trauma calls. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts we will respond to serious accidents in the rural areas surrounding Adelaide and retrieve the patients to a metropolitan hospital by helicopter. Since we’ve moved to the airport our response [...]
Posted in Retrievals on Mar 11th, 2009
Brendan Behan – in case you were wondering. The media have finally been summoned to advertise the existence of MedSTAR to South Australians. Although the service has been in existence for the past 2 weeks, it has taken till recently that the chaos was organised enough to show off to the politicians and media. Fortunately [...]
Posted in Retrievals on Mar 1st, 2009
It’s always special being part of something new. There is that sense of anticipation and energy. A perception that everything is fresh and great opportunities exist for the future. Yesterday marked one such day. We officially launched the new Statewide Retrieval Service named MedSTAR. This stands for Medical Service for Transport Assistance and Rescue. A [...]
Posted in Pictures, Retrievals on Feb 20th, 2009
Apologies in advance as this posting is going to be a tad saccharine and sentimental. In this world there is a great deal of ugliness both in terms of what humans do to this planet and each other. From time to time there are rays of light in the gloom. The important thing is to [...]
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