Four new doctors have started work with the RACQ Lifeflight Rescue helicopter service in Queensland, including one on the Sunshine Coast.
Dr Peter Brendt started his career as a paramedic in Germany, before following his passion for pre-hospital care that eventually led him to join the service on the coast.
And it hasn’t been easy. He’s been flipped upside down, blindfolded and experienced a simulated crash in the middle of the night – all to prepare him as a rescue retrieval registrar.
“LifeFlight is what I’ve worked for my whole life,” he said.
“I thought, this is a great opportunity for me. Helicopters, acute patients; it’s what I’m really looking forward to.”
Dr Brendt said the best word to describe the training was “awesome”.
“There’s winching which is something new for me so it’s really exciting, but a little bit scary. I have to say that the trainers are great, I feel very well supported,” he said.
Dr Brendt is one of 26 doctors about to head off on their first mission. But first, a week of intensive aeromedical training at the LifeFlight Training Academy had to be completed, including Helicopter Underwater Escape Training (HUET) and rescue winching.
LifeFlight HUET Manager Mick Dowling said in the unlikely event a helicopter crashed into water, it was vital the new doctors had the skills required to escape to safety.
“If the occupants have been trained in HUET, they have life skills and an instinctive skillset that they can put into play to get themselves out,” he said.
“In most cases occupants will survive the impact initially. It’s when the aircraft is underwater, they’re getting disoriented with the water, and it’s all about giving the skills to exit the aircraft using references, so the whole time they know exactly where they are in that machine.”
With HUET under their belts, the doctors took to the sky for winch training.
LifeFlight Chief Aircrew Officer Matt O’Rourke, said the intensive training exercises gave doctors specialist life-saving skills needed to reach patients who may be inaccessible by road or foot.
“We take them through a range of different winch scenarios; single winch, double winch, stretcher winch, of which they may utilise once in the field,” he said.
“The scenarios are very much tailored to the base they would be at. So that can be over land, they may be winching 100 feet to a motorbike accident, it could be 250 feet into a ravine, to ocean tasks which may be to a large container vessel, a passenger cruise ship where we have a critical patient, or an injured patient and they need to retrieve them back into the aircraft.”
The new recruits also put their pre-hospital clinical skills to the test at the Queensland Combined Emergency Services Academy at Whyte Island in Brisbane, where they participated in several high-pressure scenarios.
Each simulation was designed to mimic a real-life, worst-case scenario the doctors may be confronted with, such as a multi-casualty car crash, a house party incident involving a child and even a boating disaster.
The doctors will be deployed to RACQ LifeFlight Rescue helicopter and Air Ambulance jet bases across Queensland, with some assigned to other aeromedical services.
LifeFlight’s fleet of four Air Ambulance jets and nine rotary wing aircraft operates from eight Queensland bases and is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, directly servicing an area of 1.85 million square kilometres. It supports search and rescue efforts across 53 million square kilometres of land and sea for the Australian Maritime Safety Authority.
Sunshine Coast RACQ LifeFlight Rescue helicopter crew helped 557 people in the past 12 months – representing a 31 per cent increase on the previous year.
The crew notched more than 900 hours in the air and attended a wide range of incidents, including motor vehicle accidents, airlifting patients from incidents on rural properties and search and rescues.
The majority of RACQ LifeFlight Rescue Critical Care Doctors’ work is performed on behalf of Queensland Health, tasked by Retrieval Services Queensland, within Queensland Ambulance Service
