Award Categories: Leadership Award Through New Ways of Working

11. eRetrieval: The development of a Virtual Community of Practice to support the education and clinical practice of nurses, paramedics and doctors who utilise the critical care retrieval services of Ambulance Tasmania

Award categories: Leadership Award through New Ways of Working

Contact: Ambulance Tasmania – Aeromedical and Medical Retrieval Division

0438 213 077

The Aeromedical and Medical Retrieval Division (AMMRD) within Ambulance Tasmania provides critical care advice and aeromedical transfers within and out of the state of Tasmania. A key part of the provision of this service is the ongoing support through advice, support and education to rural and remote practitioners located at sites around Tasmania and the Bass Strait Islands. At this stage education is provided on largely an ad-hoc basis by retrieval coordinators either providing feedback on transferred cases or by site visits to conduct brief training sessions. This occurs in the context that Tasmania has a small, decentralised and dispersed population, thereby making economies of scale and service provision difficult. Many health services are provided by locum practitioners, who often are not familiar with the referral systems within the state.

Through the development of a Virtual Community of Practice (“VCoP”), a curriculum is being developed to meet the educational and clinical requirements of the health professionals who regularly liaise with the AMMRD and call upon its services. This project will utilise the features of Web 2.0 via a Learning Management System (LMS) to deliver immediate and relevant content through social media channels such as YouTube, twitter©, Wikis and blogs. Regular podcasts and vodcasts are being produced for download, which will also capture the trend towards the widespread use of mobile devices. The material will be widely and freely available, in the spirit of Free Open Access Medical education (#FOAMed).

By facilitating the development of a Virtual Community of Practice the AMMRD has improved engagement and communication with the users of the service. Whilst it is in the early stages of development, informal surveying has indicated that this resource is desperately required so that there can be a “one-stop shop” for retrieval information and critical care education, and evidence from other jurisdictions indicates that VCoPs can indeed improve services in rural and remote areas. No retrieval service has developed such a resource in Australia, so this will be a first.