Swansea
EMET are back on the road attending sessions at both Swansea and Geeveston this month. Jen and Jacinta travelled to Swansea for another evening session with the east coast GPs and nurses. A smaller turn out than usual due to illness but a good enthusiastic bunch of participants. This session was based around cases that had presented to the area of particular interest to the Swansea and Bicheno medical practice. The first case was around a lady with abdominal pain and abnormal liver function tests. It is amazing what the rural GPs do with one of them knocking on every caravan and cabin door at the local caravan parks in an attempt to try and track down their patient whom they were concerned about. The second case was a quinsy with an array of difficult social circumstance. Jen and Jacinta truly learnt just as much from the rural GPs as the GPs learnt from the session. It is inspiring to hear the devotion of the GPs and the factors they need to consider in the rural community. Such an example is the GP sending the patient home on antibiotics. They are fully aware that penicillin is the antibiotic of choice for quinsy but choose to prescribe amoxycillin. The reason being that penicillin comes in a box of 50. Patients will either not complete the course, take too many, not buy them at all due to the expense or keep the tablets that are left and use them for another infection or another family member at a later date. These are things that we rarely consider and yet they are forefront in the mind of the rural GP. The session ended with a practical scenario on epistaxis. They played with equipment such as nasal speculums, bolsters, packing and rapid rhinos.
Geeveston
Juan and Jacinta travelled to Geeveston for a very early morning session. We were greeted by an abnormally high number of participants with a total of 6 GPs, 1 nurse and 1 medical student. It was standing room only in the one bed clinic area. Juan presented on anaphylaxis which is something reasonably common to the rural GPs. GPs can not prescribe the first epipen script, and hence all first time anaphylaxis patients need to be referred to emergency for this reason. Juan went over the anaphylaxis algorithm and adrenaline doses followed by an interactive scenario of how to manage a patient with continuing symptoms.
Emergency Paediatric Course
Jacinta was also a part of the Emergency Paediatric Course that took place in mid Feb. 2 nurses from the Midlands multipurpose centre were participants in the course. It was great to see such a wide variety of experience and such wonderful engagement from all participants. The course is highly interactive with only one lecture at the beginning of the day. The feedback from participants was overwhelmingly positive. We look forward to running another course in the near future with the plan to run 3-4 days per year.
