ISTIH has extended its reach to the Solomon Islands by co funding a programme in the delivery of emergency medical care with the non profit organisation, Emergency Life Support Course an initiative of a group of Australian emergency medical specialists established in 1999.
The 2×2 day courses presented by the Emergency Life Support Course (ELS) in partnership with medical staff from Honiara were conducted at the request of of the Director and doctors working in the Emergency Department in the National Referral Hospital in the Solomon’s.
The workshops were a follow up to the inaugural courses held in Honiara in 2012 and were critical to the establishment of systems and procedures. According to the chair of the management committee of ELS, Dr Andrew Bezzina“the courses provide the front line Emergency clinicians with the systems to manage the acutely unwell efficiently and effectively”in the Solomon Islands “as there is currently no formal emergency medicine training program ‘in country’’’. The local Emergency doctors must train via the University of Port Moresby Papua New Guinea.
Dr Bezzina also added that another important outcome of the course is that it provides participants with mentorship both during their attendance and later which is significant “as there is no Emergency Physician in the country to give direction and advice appropriate to the local environment”.
About 40 medical staff which included Medical Registrars,Surgical Registrars, Orthopaedic Registrars,Emergency Department Doctors, nurses and Clinic Nurses attended the training. Each workshop was tailored to meet the specific needs of the participants. The first workshop – the ELSi a modified version of the Australian ELS course was aimed at doctors working in their Emergency Department. The second, SIREn (Serious Illness in Remote Environments), was for nursing staff working in emergency departments or in isolation in the small clinics on the Islands.
