Rural GP Anaesthetists - a 'special needs' mob?

As a rural doc I'm very lucky to have a job that is varied. I tell students and junior doctors that rural medicine offers all the stimulation and challenges of all the 'best bits' of medicine.

Currently I practice primary healthcare, emergency medicine and anaesthetics (I gave up obstetrics last year).

So this weekend just gone was a highlight - a chance to attend an annual GP-anaesthetics conference at one of the mainland tertiary hospitals. I've had this date ruled off in my diary for 12 months now...so you can imagine my disappointment when the ferry to/from Kangaroo Island sustained damage in the recent storms and the replacement therapy had to be hurriedly re-surveyed, launched and pressed into service. Needless to say all Rex flights were booked out days ahead and despite lots of people needing to get to/from KI, Rex declined to put on extra flights.

Noone can control the weather, but the lack of a contingency plan was disappointing. Not that Rex have a strong history of customer service...

Anyway, I missed the first day of the two day conference. But although I made it to the second, I was somewhat underwhelmed by what I did attend, cementing further my belief that there needs to be content tailored to the rural GPA delivered by people who 'get' rural medicine.

To backtrack, I went to my first rural GP-anaesthetist in NSW last year. It was really good, a day and a half of lectures, plus a half day in the sim lab doing emergency scenarios. But what struck me there was the disparity in equipment and resources available between city and rural anaesthetists...as well as between rural GPAs in different parts of the State. Lectures by some of the FANZCAs were all very interesting...but often they did not realise the conditions in which rural GPAs work (isolated, minimal equipment, no backup, cash-starved). At the same time I was getting increasingly inspired by blogs such as Resus.me, BroomeDocs.com, Prehospitalmed.com and LifeInTheFastLane - all of which seemed highly relevant to my practice.

So I resolved to look at some quality improvement in my own practice on my return to SA, mindful of the fact that it made sense to have commonalities in equipment and protocols available to rural anaesthetic providers. Setting up a GoogleDocs survey was relatively easy, and I was gratified to get a 2/3 response rate from rural GP-anaesthetists around Australia on my topic of difficult airway equipment availability. I'll be talking about this at the Fremantle Rural Medicine Australia conference and my paper should be out in the Oct-Dec volume of Rural & Remote Health. Stay tuned...

So, a year down the track I had really high hopes of further upskilling in SA. Whilst most of the content was good, there was an alarming propensity of some lectures to cover topics like cell salvage, lab-markers in major transfusion and the like - all very interesting, but not translatable to the rural practice environment where such resources aren't available. Questions on topics such as delayed sequence intubation and whole blood live donor panels were unfamiliar ground for the FANZCA experts, although very pertinent to many of the rural doctors.

Small group sessions made up for it, with hands on experience and chances for case discussion.

But a common theme amongst the people I spoke to was that city anaesthetists task with lecturing had very little idea of the resource limitations in country areas. The vast majority of us don't have remifentanil..or desflurane..or BIS...or access to FFP/cryo/platelets...or labs..or $15K videolaryngoscopes. The FANZCAs who visit rural hospitals, whether for elective lists or retrieval, did at least have an idea of our circumstances Yand 'special needs'

So, what does the rural GPA really need?

- lectures from experienced anaesthetists? Hell yes.
- small group sessions and case discussions? Even better.
- topics targetted to the audience and suggestions for improvement. Absolutely!

...and to top it off, perhaps consideration be given to sharing the knowledge base by holding two sessions per year (allows more docs to attend...as if one doc is at the conference, the other needs to be oncall)

...and even better, consider delivering content in rural areas by taking some of the ideas on the road.

The other thing that concerns me is the lack of communication between rural docs. Locally the RDASA has a 'rural anaesthetists' email group, but it has been inactive for a few years. It seems that many of us have the same issues with respect to equipment procurement, training and upskilling - yet operate in silos. Moreover there is little 'top-down' direction - certainly I have no sense of direction from the 'Country Health SA Anaesthetic Consultant' and it would be nice to see some more dynamism.

Maybe next year will be better...I'm going to keep pushing the barrel for local delivery of leading edge concepts in EM/anaesthesia that are rurally relevant for myself and other doctors.

Email me if you have any thoughts on this.