Working Safe in Remote Practice

Work­ing in remote health pro­vides you with excit­ing and chal­leng­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties, both pro­fes­sion­al­ly and per­son­al­ly. It’ll be an expe­ri­ence you’ll remem­ber all your life. Along with the all the pos­i­tives, there are some safe­ty risks. Obvi­ous­ly, there are risks no mat­ter where we are or what we do. How­ev­er, there are some spe­cif­ic to remote and iso­lat­ed health that you should be aware of.

Remote and iso­lat­ed areas of Aus­tralia have a num­ber of well known risks includ­ing poor­ly main­tained dirt roads, desert sur­vival fol­low­ing vehi­cle break­down, and wet sea­son flood­ing. The bush is also home to a num­ber of poi­so­nous (but usu­al­ly avoid­able) species. Remote health staff them­selves have at times required med­ical evac­u­a­tion for a range of rea­sons includ­ing severe sun­burn, vehi­cle acci­dent injuries, assault, falls, and also for med­ical rea­sons includ­ing stroke and emo­tion­al break­down. Clear­ly, it pays to look after yourself!

The Work­ing Safe in Remote Prac­tice mod­ule sits as a bridge between leg­is­la­tion, ori­en­ta­tion, and work­place safe­ty guide­lines. Com­plet­ing the mod­ule will enable you to bet­ter appre­ci­ate the impor­tance of work­place safe­ty guide­lines and how they can be used effec­tive­ly to pro­mote indi­vid­ual and team safe­ty. Devel­op­ing under­stand­ing and skills in effec­tive use of self risk assess­ment tools will fur­ther improve your abil­i­ty to pre­vent or respond effec­tive­ly to crit­i­cal events, and pro­mote the pro­vi­sion of safe, effec­tive health ser­vices in remote and iso­lat­ed settings.