Operating Australasia’s busiest trauma centre, a major metropolitan emergency department and a community-based emergency department treating adult and paediatric patients, Alfred Health is a leader in the provision of emergency and trauma care.
Our inter-disciplinary team works together to provide timely, quality care. Based on this ethos we have developed a broad range of education and knowledge exchange activities open to all healthcare professionals and delivered in collaboration with Monash University.
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IN THE NEWS
Bangladesh Emergency Care System Improvement (BECSI) Project
Bangladesh has a population of 160 million and is one of the poorest countries in Asia.
Congratulations to A/Prof Gerard O’Reilly, Emergency Physician – Alfred Health, for receiving a project grant from the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine Foundation aimed at promoting emergency care across Bangladesh.
Bangladesh has a population of 160 million and is amongst the poorest countries in Asia. It has some of the worst health indices and the burden of injury is substantial. The incidence of disasters is extreme, including cyclones, floods, famine, epidemics, building collapses, bomb blasts and complex emergencies, such as the ongoing Rohingya refugee crisis. There is no effective emergency care system, so there is minimal resilience to these disasters.
The ‘Bangladesh Emergency Care System Improvement’ project (BECSI) will be carried out in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO) and key emergency care stakeholders in Bangladesh.
The stakeholders in Bangladesh remain desperate to improve emergency care in Bangladesh, starting with:
- A national consensus on current priority actions for emergency care system improvement
- The introduction of an emergency care system improvement program
The BECSI project will use the WHO Emergency Care System Assessment (ECSA) process, which has been conducted in over 30 countries, yielding feasible priority actions and practical next steps for emergency care system development.
The BECSI project will promote the development of emergency care in Bangladesh by:
- Providing a national forum for multi-sector (government, policy, hospital, management, disaster response, prehospital, clinicians) engagement, consensus and an agreed report for emergency care system improvement, and
- Supporting national representation and participation in the introduction of an Emergency Care System Quality Improvement program.
This 12-month project will commence in April 2020. Learn more about this project
Providing the best possible care to the greatest number of patients: implementing emergency department systems in the Western Highlands of Papua New Guinea
Situated in the Western Highlands of Papua New Guinea only accessible to the capital Port Mosby by air, the Mount Hagen Public Hospital (MHPH) services more than 400,000 people in this remote region.
In November 2019, the MHPH has officially launched new triage and patient flow systems, designed to help identify patients with urgent healthcare needs so that they can be prioritised for assessment and treatment.
The new systems were initially developed by the World Health Organization, Médecins Sans Frontières and the International Committee of the Red Cross. Adaption and implementation support was supported by a team from the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine (ACEM) including Alfred Emergency physician, Dr Rob Mitchell and nurse, Jean-Phillipe Miller.
The new systems include:
- A three-tier triage system, recently developed by the World Health Organization for resource-limited settings
- An electronic ED patient registration system, to record patient presentations and monitor ED performance
- A system for presenting complaint coding, to provide burden of disease data and enable disease surveillance
The implementation of these systems will not only enable a rapid response to urgent patients, but will also support the provision of safe and efficient emergency care in Mt Hagen and other sites in Papua New Guinea. They are assisting the emergency department to save lives daily through a fast, high-quality triage process, patient registration system and data registry.
“It may be the ‘land of the unexpected’, but a lot of positive change can occur in a short amount of time in Papua New Guinea.” Dr Rob Mitchell
Professor Peter Cameron, Academic Director of Alfred Health’s Emergency and Trauma Centre, was recognised in The Australian as the best Australian researcher in the field of Emergency Medicine.
The Australian – RESEARCH September 2019
This is an area of real strength for Australian universities where many institutions, including some outside of the research- intensive ones, do well.
Read the whole article: Health & Medical Sciences: Australia’s Research Field Leaders
The road to paradise: Developing Emergency Medicine in the highlands of Papua New Guinea
Your ED | The Australasian College for Emergency Medicine Autumn 2019
It may be the ‘land of the unexpected’, but a lot of positive change can occur in a short amount of time in Papua New Guinea. In only three years, the Mount Hagen Public Hospital (MHPH) has gone from an ED lacking in systems, leadership and direction, to a department with all of the foundations for a promising future.
Read the whole article: The road to paradise: Developing Emergency Medicine in the highlands of Papua New Guinea in the “Your ED” magazine.
By Dr Rob Mitchell – Emergency physician at the Alfred Emergency and Trauma Centre in Melbourne and Project Lead for the Mount Hagen Emergency Department Triage Development Initiative. Learn more about the project.
Ever wondered what it’s like to work inside Syria’s notorious Al-Hawl refugee camp?
Miller spoke to The Sydney Morning Herald from Beirut about his day-to-day experiences working in the refugee camp with the International Committee of the Red Cross. As the only field hospital servicing the camp, it has treated more than 2000 patients since opening on May 30, and Miller said it was treating “a huge amount” of children.
A boy, 10-year-old Omar, was in a wheelchair when he arrived at the hospital, “He was one of the first patients to undergo surgery. He had an old fracture. We removed a piece of dead bone and fixed his leg and put him in a cast and he’s soon to be walking. “Those moments are very special where you can see the difference you’ve made,” Miller said.
After a month in the camp, he was on his way home to Melbourne, where he works at The Alfred hospital. Read the whole article
JP Miller at the Al-Hawl refugee camp, Syria
The Alfred Hospital Emergency Department, August 2018