Notre Dame’s Rural Trauma Week offers a unique, hands-on experience for med and paramedicine students, preparing them for real-life trauma scenarios. Led by expert faculty and local professionals, this immersive program builds confidence, teamwork, and essential skills for rural healthcare.
It was an unexpected encounter with a two-vehicle road accident that enabled Notre Dame third-year medicine student Sharlene B to feel confident in the University’s Rural Trauma Week training she had received.
Led by Associate Professor Andrew Dean, Dr Claudia Ng and Dr Samuel Bulford from The University of Notre Dame’s School of Medicine, 120 second-year medicine students and 20 paramedicine students attended the School of Medicine’s five-day Rural Trauma Week earlier this year.
Run in collaboration with The University of Tasmania (UTAS)’s Paramedicine Faculty, the annual Rural Trauma Week is a curriculum highlight for many students given its close connection to real-life scenarios and the opportunity to spend time in the Blue Mountains, Lithgow Rural Clinical School and at the UTAS campus in Rozelle, Sydney.
Recounting her discovery of the major accident, Sharlene said, “As I approached the vehicles, I found myself checking for danger, introducing myself with confidence, quickly triaging the situation and attending to the person most in need stuck in the vehicle.”
“It was an almost identical situation to a rural trauma simulation we had run through on the road behind the clinical school during Rural Trauma Week. I conducted ABCD and felt I evaluated the person well.
“I know I could not have responded to the accident the way I did without the training I received. The high calibre simulation training is still unlike anything I have done to date.”
With 96% of students agreeing that the training course helped them to develop their skills in the assessment and management of trauma and interprofessional practice, Dr Claudia Ng believes the learning experiences of Rural Trauma Week are an essential part of the University’s curriculum, encouraging students to consider the challenges of rural and remote areas, and the importance of understanding and respecting other professionals.
“A unique feature of Rural Trauma Week is the co-design of the program not only between faculty members from different professions, institutions, local community services, with past students also playing a big part in the development of the program.” Dr Ng said.
“For the last two years, the VRA Rescue NSW also partnered with us and provided wrecked vehicles from which they extracted patient actors (played by local high school students) in the scenarios. Medical and Paramedical students then took over to assess, stabilise and transfer the patients to a mock Emergency Department set up outside the clinical school.”
“It is training like this that equips future health professionals with the skills and resilience needed to work in teams successfully in stressful situations.”
Rural Trauma Week provides students with the opportunity to learn from a wide range of educators including NSW Ambulance Paramedics, Emergency Specialist doctors from Nepean Hospital Emergency Department, Careflight doctors and paramedics, Rural Generalist doctors and University staff.
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