Five years of medical school and five more years of working as a doctor has not taught me anything about being an air traffic controller. Yet, working as the District Medical Officer on call for East Arnhem Land, I wonder if I perhaps should have taken a course in aeronautical logistics.
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| East Woody Beach, Nhulunbuy |
I'm working in Gove District Hospital in Nhulunbuy, Northern Territory on a 3 month GP registrar rotation. This area is a place of wonderful contrasts, of bumpy dirt roads that become impassable in the wet season, and a hot spot for little planes shuttling people in every direction. The hospital receives patients from the mining town where it is situated, several nearby Aboriginal communities, a number of bigger communities further away, and many small homeland regions. The budget for patient travel is enormous. It is often a logistical challenge to prioritise and arrange transport by phone, with minimal knowledge about how well equipped your caller is to handle an emergency. For acute medical problems,
Careflight provides evacuation services. For less serious issues, the patient travel department scrounges seats on charter or commercial flights.
Working a shift as the District Medical Officer, many of these issues become important. Is it better to send the lady with unstable chest pain straight to Darwin with a nurse escort now, or wait a few hours for a team including a flight doctor to come? When the autopilot equipment on one plane breaks down, how will the young man with acute abdominal pain be brought in? Can the pilot fit in one more pickup before running out of allotted flying hours for the day? Is the broken down plane removed from the runway in that community yet?
Working here is a rich and challenging experience in many ways. Sometimes it seems a different world to down South, and as a GP registrar it is great to experience new things in training.
