The Rural Emergency Responder Network (RERN) is unique to South Australia.
Rural doctors nominate to carry an ambulance pager and be available to support country ambulance services (many of which are volunteer-crews in the country).
RERN doctors undertake regular upskilling and audit of cases. They are paid under a fee-for-service by the SA Department of Health and equipped with prehospital bags to allow interventions such as prehospital anaesthesia and analgesia.
The UK has the British Association for Immediate Care Scheme (BASICS); New Zealand as Primary Response in Medical Emergencies (PRIME) – both smaller countries without the ‘tyranny of distance’. Come on – if the Poms and Kiwis can do it, surely we can in Oz?
Here’s a presentation on RERN and prehospital medicine from a rural perspective from the smacc 2013 conference – basic concept is to have a system of appropriately equipped and trained rural responders, akin to BASICS
You can access a powerpoint with slides from the talk here :
[…] RERN members and those interested in improving resus skills attended a post-course session facilitated by Dr Hugh Grantham and Ms Chris Wilson, utilising the local hospital resus room and involving local nurses. Participants completed four challenging scenarios […]
[…] Rob’s colour-coded drug vials made me re-visit the contents of my own RERN kit (rural emergency responder network) and do a little labelling & re-ordering of near expired […]
[…] Australia has an embryonic scheme, RERN (Rural Emergency Responder Network), utilising experienced rural doctors to respond to prehospital […]
[…] course in South Australia we have the RERN system, designed to ‘value add’ in specific cases, typically where local (mostly volunteer) […]