Across summer weekends in 1975, three people were aboard our Bell 47 helicopter – a pilot and two rescue crewmen.
Today, the crew on board has grown to four skilled professionals, a Pilot, Aircrew Officer, NSW Ambulance Critical Care Paramedic, NSW Health Doctor, and on occasion a NSW Health Retrieval Nurse, all working together to deliver positive patient outcomes across Northern NSW.
Each of these individuals play an important role in helping deliver our world-class aeromedical capability.
Our Pilots are skilled professionals with many years of experience in aviation and specifically trained to conduct aeromedical operations. The Pilot has overall control of the aircraft and leads the entire crew during missions. They are responsible for safely operating the aircraft in all-weather environments including IFR, night, utilising Night Vision Goggles and in cloud, flight and mission planning for all missions, radio communications with air traffic control and other airspace users, and assisting the medical team with patient transfer.
Our Aircrew Officers’ role is as diverse as it is unique. They have extensive aviation experience and their role changes as each mission develops. Their responsibilities include assisting the Pilot with flight and mission planning, assisting the Pilot with inflight emergencies as well as manoeuvring and landing the aircraft in remote and confined environments, operating the winch to insert and extract medical crews and patients, conducting hover entry/exit operations, operating aircraft systems and deploying equipment and stores during search and rescue operations, and assisting the medical team with patient transfer.
The NSW Ambulance Critical Care Paramedics have at least 10 years’ paramedic experience and are experts in pre-hospital patient care. Their responsibilities on the aircraft are to work with the NSW Health Doctor to deliver pre-hospital, life-saving medical treatment, assist in mission planning and communicating with other emergency services, plan and effect the recovery of patients via winch, and recover patients who need assistance out of the water.
The NSW Health Doctors are extensively trained in aeromedical operations and work in conjunction with the NSW Ambulance Critical Care Paramedic to provide specialist level, out of hospital medical treatment to patients. They are responsible for the clinical care of the patient, both in cases where urgent surgery is required the patient needs to be collected and transported rapidly, and where the patient may be trapped and initial treatment may need to be performed. The Doctors role is to coordinate, prioritise and deliver care, while other emergency care professionals secure and stabilise the scene and extract the patient.
Some missions require a specialist NSW Health Retrieval Nurse with years of critical care experience who may be specially trained in aspects of paediatric intensive care or other medical fields subject to the patient’s needs. The Retrieval Nurse Specialists provide initial assessment and advice to referring hospitals and coordinate transfers from many of the small hospitals within our region to specialist facilities. In this case, a specialist Retrieval Nurse accompanies the Doctor on-board to provide high level intensive care to seriously ill and often unstable patients, provides clinical co-ordination between intensive care units in hospitals across the state and assists the Pilot and Aircrew Officer with patient transfer.
It is the skills of these professionals that ensures our ability to deliver the highest standard of critical care to the people of Northern NSW.