This year four NSW Health Pathology staff were selected to undergo training with AUSMAT, the Australian Medical Assistance Team, preparing them to be deployed to disasters or health responses at short notice.

In August 2023, the Nation­al Crit­i­cal Care and Trau­ma Response Cen­tre (NCCTRC) sent out an expres­sion of inter­est seek­ing med­ical sci­ence pro­fes­sion­als for recruit­ment into the Aus­tralian Med­ical Assis­tance Team (AUSMAT) vol­un­teer data­base for future AUSMAT deploy­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties and activities.

Over 40 appli­ca­tions from NSW Health Pathol­o­gy staff were received – with four select­ed to under­take the rig­or­ous train­ing required in the 2024 courses.

Philip Dupal a Hos­pi­tal Sci­en­tist at our Mait­land lab­o­ra­to­ry, Luke Ryan a Hos­pi­tal Sci­en­tist based at our Bathurst lab­o­ra­to­ry, Clau­dia Alvarez Chavar­ria­ga from the Trans­fu­sion team at Rand­wick and Infec­tious Dis­eases physi­cian at Suther­land Hos­pi­tal Dr Ben Knip­pen­berg all recent­ly com­plet­ed the train­ing at the NCCTRC in Darwin.

What is AUSMAT?

The Aus­tralian Med­ical Assis­tance Team is a World Health Orga­ni­za­tion-accred­it­ed Emer­gency Med­ical Team man­aged by NCCTRC for the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment Depart­ment of Health and Aged Care. AUSMAT leads the way in civil­ian med­ical team pre­pared­ness and response to sud­den onset dis­as­ter, med­ical or human­i­tar­i­an emer­gency, domes­tic or international.

It’s made up of med­ical pro­fes­sion­als, includ­ing physi­cians, reg­is­tered nurs­es, allied health and para­medics, and non-med­ical mem­bers such as logisticians.

While ini­tial respons­es con­cen­trat­ed on inter­na­tion­al events and dis­as­ters, more recent­ly the focus has shift­ed to pub­lic health emer­gen­cies, such as the measles epi­dem­ic in Samoa (Octo­ber 2019-Jan­u­ary 2020), as well as to domes­tic deploy­ments includ­ing the cat­a­stroph­ic bush fires in Vic­to­ria and New South Wales in Jan­u­ary 2020, and Australia’s COVID-19 response.

What does AUSMAT training involve?

The train­ing course involves a com­pre­hen­sive six-week online course plus a one week face-to-face res­i­den­cy held in Dar­win at the NCCTRC’s new­ly ren­o­vat­ed train­ing facility.

The stan­dard­ised nation­al train­ing brings togeth­er train­ers from a mix of pro­fes­sions and juris­dic­tions to deliv­er the course.

Course con­tent includes:
• Sur­vival in aus­tere environments
• Equip­ment familiarisation/management
• Hos­tile negotiation
• Trip planning
• Cul­tur­al awareness
• Med­ical man­age­ment of mul­ti casu­al­ties in the field
• Human­i­tar­i­an operations
• Crowd management
• Water purification

Luke Ryan says the course has been devel­oped to expose par­tic­i­pants to a range of essen­tial tech­niques and sur­vival skills need­ed for suc­cess­ful man­age­ment in the field dur­ing a health emergency.

“It’s par­tic­u­lar­ly focused on test­ing the par­tic­i­pants’ capac­i­ty to sur­vive in dif­fi­cult and hos­tile envi­ron­ments as a val­ued team mem­ber,” he explained.

“It involves both class­room and prac­ti­cal exer­cis­es includ­ing an overnight field deployment.”

Clau­dia Alvarez Chavar­ria­ga described the train­ing as tough but life-changing.

“Phys­i­cal­ly and men­tal­ly, it was a lot to take on board,” she said.

“Unlike oth­er deploy­ment organ­i­sa­tions, AUSMAT required us to under­go prac­ti­cal sim­u­la­tions as though we had been deployed to a real mass casu­al­ty event.

“We had to deal with and impro­vise as though we were under heat stress and in hard-to-access loca­tions. But it was immense­ly rewarding!”

Philip Dupal said it was a priv­i­lege to have been invit­ed to attend the pre-deploy­ment training.

“It was a fan­tas­tic oppor­tu­ni­ty to work with a diverse group of pro­fes­sion­als and devel­op new skills togeth­er,” he said.

“I look for­ward to using these new skills and work­ing with the AUSMAT team in the future if I am required to respond to a crisis.”

NSW Health Pathology’s Emergency/Disaster Man­ag­er Scott Pearce said the organ­i­sa­tion was excit­ed to be boost­ing the num­ber of its staff involved with AUSMAT.

“We cur­rent­ly have two trained and deploy­able med­ical staff list­ed in the AUSMAT data­base, and we are proud to have anoth­er four staff in train­ing,” he said.

“The train­ing is about mak­ing sure they are pre­pared for what­ev­er sit­u­a­tion they may find them­selves in, whether that is a dis­as­ter sit­u­a­tion here in Aus­tralia or overseas.

“They need to be able to deploy rapid­ly, with the assis­tance of the Aus­tralian Defence Force, and can be self-suf­fi­cient once they reach a dis­as­ter zone.

“It’s all about help­ing peo­ple and com­mu­ni­ties affect­ed by dis­as­ters in des­per­ate need of med­ical assistance.”

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