The CRANAplus offices will be closed from midday Tuesday 24 December and will reopen on Thursday 2 January 2025. The CRANAplus Bush Support Line is available throughout the holidays and can be contacted at any time on 1300 805 391.

About this course
  • Are you ade­quate­ly pre­pared to pro­vide advanced emer­gency care and man­age a crit­i­cal­ly unwell or injured patient in the remote context?
  • Would you like to under­stand and apply a glob­al­ly accept­ed, safe and reli­able best prac­tice method for the imme­di­ate man­age­ment of such a patient?

The Advanced Remote Emer­gency Care + Advanced Life Sup­port (AREC + ALS) course is designed by remote health clin­i­cians for remote health clin­i­cians. The course is con­tex­tu­alised to remote and iso­lated prac­tice, and builds on the core prin­ci­ples of ear­ly recog­ni­tion, assess­ment, and man­age­ment of the crit­i­cal­ly unwell or injured patient using a sys­tem­at­ic pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary sur­vey approach. It includes resus­ci­ta­tion and sta­bil­i­sa­tion of the patient accord­ing to pri­or­i­ty, deter­min­ing if a patient’s needs exceed the facil­i­ty’s capa­bil­i­ties, arrang­ing appro­pri­ate defin­i­tive care and ensur­ing that opti­mum care is provided.

The course sup­ports clin­i­cians that work in resource lim­it­ed con­texts and/​or small teams to devel­op con­fi­dence and lead­er­ship qual­i­ties around crit­i­cal think­ing and mak­ing impor­tant clin­i­cal decisions.

CRANAplus encour­ages clin­i­cians to apply the knowl­edge and skills acquired learnt with­in the con­text of the poli­cies of the employ­ing health ser­vice and with­in each indi­vid­u­al’s own scope of practice.

Who is this course for?

The AREC+ALS course is designed for expe­ri­enced health pro­fes­sion­als cur­rent­ly work­ing in remote and iso­lat­ed prac­tice who have an advanced lev­el of clin­i­cal knowl­edge and skills. While the course con­tains scaf­fold­ed con­tent to accom­mo­date vary­ing knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence lev­els, there is an assump­tion of pre­req­ui­site skills as this is an advanced course.

Pre­req­ui­sites for attend­ing AREC + ALS are:

  • Suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of Remote Emer­gency Care (REC) or equiv­a­lent emer­gency care course with­in the last 2 years
  • Cur­rent basic life sup­port (BLS) certificate
  • Recent and rel­e­vant acute emer­gency or crit­i­cal care clin­i­cal expe­ri­ence with­in the last 2 years and/​or rel­e­vant post­grad­u­ate qual­i­fi­ca­tions in emer­gency care or crit­i­cal care.
Course deliv­ery

The AREC + ALS course uses a blend­ed learn­ing approach inclu­sive of:

  • Online pre-work­shop con­tent that is cur­rent, evi­dence-based, mod­u­larised, and inter­ac­tive so that par­tic­i­pants come to work­shops already hav­ing prac­tised apply­ing must know’ con­tent to a range of emer­gency presentations.
  • An online assess­ment (com­plet­ed pre-course). Requir­ing 90% pass.
  • A two-and-a-half-day face-to-face work­shop where par­tic­i­pants can put the­o­ry into prac­tice’ in hands-on skills sta­tions and clin­i­cal sce­nario prac­tice at an advanced clin­i­cal level.
  • A prac­ti­cal sce­nario assess­ment based on recog­nis­ing clin­i­cal dete­ri­o­ra­tion, rapid assess­ment of the patient using the pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary sur­vey approach, resus­ci­ta­tion, and sta­bil­i­sa­tion of the patient accord­ing to priority. 
On suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of this course clin­i­cians will be able to…

Through self-reflec­tion, course par­tic­i­pants will close­ly exam­ine and analyse expe­ri­ences to iden­ti­fy and address com­pe­tence and expe­ri­ence gaps in their knowl­edge, skills and confidence.

On com­ple­tion they will be able to:

  • Per­form a thor­ough, organ­ised approach to recog­ni­tion of clin­i­cal dete­ri­o­ra­tion and pri­ori­tise assess­ment and man­age­ment of the imme­di­ate and poten­tial­ly life-threat­en­ing emer­gency situation.
  • Utilise clin­i­cal judge­ment to inter­pret assess­ment and diag­nos­tic data to form a clin­i­cal impression.
  • Demon­strate a sound under­stand­ing of patho­phys­i­ol­o­gy under­pin­ning com­plex emer­gency sit­u­a­tions and utilise advanced clin­i­cal knowl­edge to devel­op a plan for sta­bil­i­sa­tion of the iden­ti­fied emergency.
  • Per­form Advanced Life Sup­port aligned with ANZ­COR guidelines.
  • Ini­ti­ate and main­tain col­lab­o­ra­tive rela­tion­ships with oth­er mem­bers of the health care team (on and off site) with con­fi­dence and to improve patient outcomes.
On suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion par­tic­i­pants will be awarded…
  • A CRANAplus Advanced Remote Emer­gency Care + Advanced Life Sup­port course cer­tifi­cate (valid for two years).
Cater­ing information

Giv­en the remote loca­tion of many of our cours­es, we are some­times restrict­ed to Veg­e­tar­i­an and Gluten Free dietary options. While we always sup­ply fresh food and fruit, par­tic­u­lar foods may not be eas­i­ly accessed in remote areas. Should you have quite spe­cif­ic restric­tions we encour­age you to bring some basics and then pick and choose from the fresh food offered on the day. You should also inform us of any aller­gies you may have so we can advise the cater­er and be aware of the situation.

Finan­cial sup­port to attend

CRANAplus Mem­bers receive a dis­count on face-to-face course reg­is­tra­tion and are eli­gi­ble to apply for var­i­ous CRANAplus pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment grants to meet the costs asso­ci­at­ed with course atten­dance. You can also find a list of grants and schol­ar­ships offered by exter­nal providers, such as the Health Work­force Schol­ar­ship Pro­gram, on our Path­way Incen­tives page.

Addi­tion­al FAQs

View the answers to oth­er fre­quent­ly asked ques­tions about CRANAplus face-to-face courses.