The Medical Team
CareFlight medical teams comprise a doctor/paramedic or doctor/registered nurse combination. These medical teams undertake a diverse range of missions including helicopter rapid response critical care, helicopter rescue, domestic and international aeromedical retrieval and road ambulance retrieval. All medical staff are required to complete a comprehensive training program prior to commencing active duty.
Doctors
CareFlight doctors are specialists or senior registrars in one of the three fields of critical care: anaesthesia, emergency medicine or intensive care. These doctors, equipped with mobile intensive care units, are able to provide hospital-standard treatment to the seriously ill and injured at the incident site and while in transit. They administer blood transfusions, anaesthetise and intubate patients and place them on life support systems. In the course of their operational training, our doctors learn and practise winch rescue operations, radio procedures and safety and survival. CareFlight runs a Pre-hospital Trauma Course which teaches the doctors additional skills in caring for the critically injured outside of the familiar hospital environment.
Registered Nurses
CareFlight employs registered nurses to work out of our bases in Sydney, Darwin, Perth and Cairns. Our nurses are trained and experienced in both road ambulance and aircraft retrievals and repatriations. Because our helicopter and jet work is usually high acuity, all of our registered nurses are experienced critical care clinicians. They have current certification in Retrieval Nursing, Advanced Life Support, Immediate Life Support, Advanced Cardiac Life Support and/or Trauma Nursing Program (TNP) or Trauma Nursing Core Course (TNCC). Our training and equipment are standardised, giving us the ability to move nurses from base to base.
Paramedics
The paramedics who work on the CareFlight helicopters out of our Westmead base are deployed exclusively on HIRT missions. Those paramedics who work with our doctors on the Ambulance Service helicopters are members of the Special Casualty Access Team (SCAT) and are trained to access and treat patients at accidents scenes and in hard to reach locations such as canyons, mines and on cliff ledges.