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MEDICINAL PURPOSE: Head of Defence Health Services AVM Tony Austin, President Australian Military Medicine Association Dr Russell Schedlich and ADF Surgeon General RADM Graeme S. Shirtley at the conference in Brisbane. Photo: AC Aaron Curran |
| IN A NUTSHELL |
Military Health put under the microscope at medical conference in Brisbane.
Innovations such as remote treatment via web cam considered as a way to deal with a possible pandemic.
Three nurses were praised for using their initiative in emergency situations overseas. |
Volume 49, No. 20, November 02, 2006
By Graham Davis
More than 550 health professionals, 400 of them from the ADF, have attended a hard-hitting conference co-hosted by the Australian Military Medicine Association and Australia’s Defence Health Services.
Held at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre from October 19 to 22, “Military Health – The Challenge” conference was boosted by a trade fair, where 32 organisations put their health services and equipment worth millions of dollars, on display.
The conference is the second conducted by AMMA and Defence Health Services, the first being held in Sydney four years ago.
Delegates from as far afield as China, the US, UK, New Zealand, and Indonesia joined Australian Defence doctors, nurses, medics and associated professionals at the conference.
Defence Minister Dr Brendan Nelson officially opened the conference.
Issues raised will now become important matters for discussion not only for ADF senior management but also government.
A leading British medical planner, MAJGEN Mike Von Bertele, suggested that Australia needed debate about whether it would accept large numbers of Australian casualties if it were to enter large scale discretionary conflicts.
“Australia is slightly risk averse,” he said. “You don’t want things to go wrong.”
The conference was told of Australian medical team members donating their own blood to save the life of a Timorese man stabbed by a sword during the recent Dili riots.
A visiting US disaster expert gave his opinion that there was “zero hope” of providing enough hospital beds during a pandemic. He said it would be necessary to improvise with makeshift hospitals in schools and auditoriums, and to set up morgues in factories.
He suggested that in future large-scale emergencies many patients would remain in their homes and that medicos would monitor their treatment remotely using a web cam on the internet.
Two other senior US Army speakers told of the Armed Forces Longitudinal Technology Application, a computer system which allows health personnel to keep track of any members’ health status and location.
As an example, if a was soldier hurt in combat, the incident would be recorded by a corpsman or doctor in a hand-held entry computer, including what treatment was given and where he would be sent for further treatment.
The two US speakers also told of the introduction of dog tags with a computer chip.
An Australian expert told of the problems created in the Middle East by sand flies and the measures needed to be taken by those working in the open and inside. Temperatures up to 55˚C created environmental concerns.
Late delivery of mail from home was also recognised as a stressor although daily email access was available.
There was a bouquet for three nurses who introduced a pilot scheme where undergraduate personnel could be given a taste of Defence through a series of night time lectures.
An Air Force nurse told of having to improvise at the Balad hospital when patients being repatriated from Iraq to the US Military Hospital in Germany needed to be kept warm but where supplies of blankets were temporarily exhausted.
“We put beanies on them or put them in a body bag and cut a hole for their faces,” she said.
Professor Dianna Horvath, the CEO of the new Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care applauded Defence on the way it debriefs its personnel after an incident and suggested civilian health institutions needed to do the same.
