Fake patients, real impact: hospital simulation may cure rural doctor crisis

In reality, the third-year medical student was about to be part of a dramatic simulation that aimed at helping tackle the rural doctor crisis.

Emergency response teams from across the Bega Valley collaborated in a highly orchestrated event that took place at South East Regional Hospital on Wednesday, October 15.

Future doctors and nurses gained first-hand experience in how to respond to multiple trauma patients in a large-scale simulated multi-vehicle crash.

The exercise scenario was based on a car having driven down a street erratically at speed, swerved into an oncoming lane, and sideswiped a second car that then crashed into a cafe's outdoor seating.

Ms Raftesath, 23, said she was playing the role of John, a 55-year-old male who was "just in the wrong place at the wrong time" when he was hit by a "dodgy driver outside a cafe".

There were six people 'injured' in the mock scenario whose story required assessment and treatment by Ambulance NSW.

Two of these patients required transport to the hospital for "significant airway burns and a leg amputation".

The simulation would then continue for other medical students within the hospital with state-of-the-art simulation dummies.

The emergency response simulation included members from the NSW Police Force, Bega Volunteer Rescue Association (VRA), NSW Ambulance, State Emergency Service (SES), Fire and Rescue, and the Rural Fire Service (RFS).

As a key part of their postgraduate medical degree studies, medical students from the Australian National University (ANU) were central to the exercise. They observed the clinical simulation in trauma care and emergency medicine.

Due to the critical shortage of rural health workers, Dr Nathan Oates, the coordinator of the exercise, ANU Rural Clinical School lecturer and SERH anaesthetist, had created the innovative solution to potentially help.

He said two things spurred the creation of the event.

The first was finding a way to inspire those working in health services to move to the country for work and life.

"There's a growing amount of evidence around exposure during the course of training and how that influences decision-making, especially if that exposure is a positive thing," Dr Oates told Bega District News.

"We have an annual visit from a group of really junior medical students for a rural experience each year, so we decided we wanted to create something that would be a memorable experience for them.

According to Dr Oates, since beginning the annual simulation event, numerous third-year students had applied for placement in Bega.

While it was uncertain if the simulations directly influenced their decisions to move to Bega, he said it successfully demonstrated that working regionally did not put students at a disadvantage compared to their city-based peers.

Subsequently, the simulation exercise was also Dr Oates' way of acknowledging the numerous emergency services that fearlessly help the community.

"After coming through the bushfires, all of us in the community, I think, were grateful for the incredible amount of time and care put in by the largely volunteer organisations responsible for emergency response," he said.

Dr Oates said the simulation involved a volunteered group of medical students who wore "moulage": realistic, mock injuries using make-up, prosthetics, or other materials, for training purposes.

"The medical students we have this year weren't in their 50s and 60s, but for part of the training for the day, we did want to simulate having people with different ages and medical problems," he said.

"Part of the reason for that was that the outdoor program was linked with a separate training program that was running for the whole day within the hospital.

"That's how you get to the situation where you have a 23-year-old female medical student who then, for the purpose of the simulation, is someone who is older."