ANZCA Bulletin June 2012 - final.pdf - Australian and New Zealand ...

ANZCA contributionhelps improve patientcare in Papua New GuineacontinuedDr Morriss says small donations of thiskind can help reduce the gap betweenanaesthetic practice in Australia and NewZealand, and our closest neighbours, suchas PNG.“For relatively little expenditure or littleresource, we can make a huge benefit,” hesays. “We work very hard to get maximumbang for buck. So for a small investment,we can make quite large changes inanaesthetic practice, patient safety, allthese things.”Beyond PNG, the committee isalso looking at overseas developmentopportunities in other countries.This includes a new initiative, theinaugural ANZCA Overseas Aid TraineeScholarship, which was recently awardedto Dr Steven Smith from the Mater Mothers’Hospital in Brisbane.This scholarship provides support fora final year ANZCA trainee to accompanya visiting team to a developing countryand improve their knowledge andunderstanding of the challenges ofproviding anaesthesia and pain medicinein the developing world. Dr Smith plans tovisit Vanuatu later this year.The committee also supports theteaching of the Essential Pain Managementcourse, which aims to improve knowledgeof pain in developing countries, provide asimple framework for managing pain, andexplore ways of overcoming local barrierswhich include lack of staff, inadequatepain knowledge and the scarcity orabsence of analgesic drugs.The course was developed and pilotedby former Faculty of Pain Medicine deanDr Roger Goucke and Dr Morriss in PNGin 2010, and has been taught in Fiji, theSolomon Islands, Vanuatu, Micronesia,Cook Islands, Mongolia, Vietnam, Rwandaand Tanzania, with plans to introduceit to Spanish-speaking Central Americalater this year and other parts of Asia.It has been translated into Mongolian,Vietnamese and Spanish.Dr Morriss says the Essential PainManagement course is an example ofstarting with important principles andbuilding on the basics of practice.“The message of the course is extremelysimple so that facilitates early hand-overto local instructors,” he says. “But thecourse is also very flexible so people canlayer on as much complexity as they like.”Overall, he says the Overseas AidCommittee has achieved a lot in its twoyears of operation, ensuring ANZCA is“an outward-looking rather than inwardlookingCollege” and providing benefitsfor all areas of the College.“It increases the relevance andprofile of the College internationally andensures people are gaining skills from ananaesthetic and teaching point of view,”Dr Morriss says. “From an individual pointof view, people often do it for altruisticreasons. And, from a regional point ofview, we think that it’s also good to begood neighbours.”Meaghan ShawMedia Manager, ANZCA“ We work very hard to getmaximum bang for buck.So for a small investment,we can make quite largechanges in anaestheticpractice, patient safety,all these things.”Above from left: Learning to use equipment;An emergency trolley.30 ANZCA Bulletin June 2012