Education

CRANAplus Courses, remote health educational opportunities

One of the three main focus areas for CRANAplus is the education of those working or wishing to work in remote health care in Australia.

We offer a wide range of educational opportunities including the nationally recognized First Line Emergency Care program that provides the knowledge and skills for responding to medical emergencies in the remote context.  Each of our current programs is endorsed by the Royal College of Nursing Australia.  The Maternity Emergency Care course is also endorsed by the Australian College of Midwives MidPLUS.

Remote Emergency Care (REC)
Developed in consultation with Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine and the College of Emergency Medicine, the REC course is designed to enable remote health workers to develop the skills necessary to respond to the emergency situations common in remote scenerios.

Maternity Emergency Care (MEC)
Developed in consultation with the Australian College of Midwives, this course is designed to give remote health practitioners, who are not midwives, the basic skills necessary to provide emergency care for expectant mothers and babies.

Midwifery Upskilling (MIDUS)
This course has been developed in response to specific needs identified by midwives working in remote and isolated areas. This program aims to provide an overview of current practice in antenatal, intrapartum and postnatal care. This will include a discussion of complications in pregnancy and birth, and the emergency management of a pregnant woman and her baby, with an emphasis on care in the remote or isolated setting.

Advanced Remote Emergency Care (Advanced REC)
The aim of this course is to meet the specific needs of practitioners working in an isolated setting that may need to take a lead role in the management of care of a critically injured or unwell patient, increasing their competencies of experienced remote health practitioners to an expert level.  The intent of the course is to maintain the skills of experienced remote and isolated multidisciplinary health practitioners and to help them to confidently respond to, and manage medical emergencies (including trauma situations) at a very high level, beyond that of the current REC program.

Specialised Training for Aboriginal Health Workers (AHW)
Aboriginal health workers are an integral part of any remote emergency team and as such need to have access to the same knowledge around the principles of care for the critically ill or injured patient or the pregnant woman.  The emergency care courses are for Aboriginal health workers and have been designed to meet their need for further education in emergency care. The contents of the program will be flexible and adaptable in its ability to meet the needs of the participants.

Online Education

In order to meet the challenge of overcoming traditional barriers to continuing education, CRANAplus has recognised the need for health professionals to access innovative educational delivery methods.

The CRANAplus Online e-learning program will complement the First Line Emergency Courses and assist in maintaining lifelong learning in health with its diversity and pressure on resourcing in rural and remote practice.

The CRANAplus Online e-learning program will empower the health professional by creating learning modules that are engaging, interactive and relevant to rural and remote practice.

The modules will encourage health professionals to make context specific decisions with directional feedback which encourages them to reflect upon their decisions and develop their critical thinking skills in the remote clinical setting.

We are expecting this new, exciting training option to be available in mid 2010. Stay tuned!