More than 70 delegates from Australia and New Zealand descended upon the Byron at Byron Resort over the weekend to hear about the latest advancements in anaesthesia for GPs.
While it may not sound like a sexy subject, general practitioner anaesthetists (GPAs) are often the only option available to patients in many towns in regional and remote Australia.
The GPs were able to get practical, hands-on experience thanks to Southern Cross University’s $1.2 million ‘SimLab’, essentially a mobile hospital with a three-dimensional, computerised model that can be programmed to simulate breathing, coughing and vomiting.
Vital signs, blood oxygen levels and pupil dilation are among some of the factors that can be programmed and adjusted for each different simulation, enabling participants to participate in very realistic simulated medical scenes and deal with a range of different scenarios.
This conference was the second in this series facilitated by North Coast NSW GP Training (NCGPT) with numbers doubling this year from the very successful previous event two years ago.
‘This reveals great demand from regional and rural practitioners for specialist medical training such as this,’ said NCGPT conference organiser, Amanda Shoebridge.
North Coast NSW GP Training provides general-practice education and training to medical registrars from Tweed Heads down to Port Macquarie.
