GreyWind
Norm Smith Medallist
There's nothing set in stone yet as we'll need to go through APHRA to see what our scope of practice will be but the idea is to ease transfers from UCCs and homes in rural locations. Hopefully there will be an expansion of medications to be administered by the PP, prescription rights, wound care, catheter care, sutures, hell if they could take xrays that would be great as well.I think it’s a sound bite only
There could be pressure via ambulance union for expanded practice to minimise some transfers (is more relevant in country areas due to distance and often burden of arranging discharge transport when there’s no family/ non ambulant patient) And it’s now rare to find a GP who home visits (non existent in northern and northwest suburbs).
However the AV (regular paramedics) can currently contact the statewide virtual ED to discuss the patient with a doctor and the doctor can observe patient via video call, so I’m not clear as to the added benefit of expanded practice. GreyWind can you comment
Having worked rural for 2.5 years it's a great initiative as I've had to take people into Melbourne for treatment that the UCC should have been able to provide but can't for whatever reason. This then creates a 6 hour turnaround until we could return to the area, the next closest ambulance is 20 minutes away and after that it's an hour. From what I know I don't expect this to really have a massive impact on metro work.