Aeromedical Retrievals and Inter-facility Transports
Aero-medical retrievals and inter-facility transports are conducted from RFDS Bases. RFDS retrieval staff are available to respond to calls 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The service includes the provision of primary responses and the transport of patients between health facilities.
The medical staffing of retrievals and transports will differ depending on the patient's clinical condition. Some will be attended by both a medical officer and flight nurse while others will be attended by a flight nurse only.
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A Flight Nurse and Medical Officer attend to an injured man at the scene of an accident
Coordination of Flights
Coordinating medical staff work full-time in the air medical retrieval role, have a well-developed understanding of the geography of the state and the resources of referring and receiving centres. The communication system enables referring medical officers to usually speak to the actual medical officer who will be undertaking the retrieval flight, with a single telephone call.
This minimizes the number of phone calls and times when a referring medical officer must relay patient information. It provides an opportunity for the retrieval doctor to get information first hand, and to weight up the equipment requirements for the flight and assign it a priority. It enables discussion with the referral source of alternatives to transport and alternative transport methods.
It ensures the absolute minimal delays in tasking urgent flights as the assessing medical officer is familiar with service capabilities and time-frames and is in direct communication with coordination centre.
In most cases, referring medical officers contact the receiving institution directly to arrange admission. Callers are referred to relevant tertiary hospital departments for ongoing advice where necessary.
There is frequently a requirement to evaluate the relative merits of a mixture of requests involving obstetric, paediatric, medical and surgical cases. All clinical staff are expected to have experience in obstetrics, paediatrics, anaesthetics and emergency medicine.