My place­ment with Queens­land Ambu­lance Ser­vice to Charleville for two weeks can only be described as one of the best expe­ri­ences I have had as a stu­dent paramedic.

Ini­tial­ly, I was hes­i­tant to apply for a rur­al place­ment because the dis­tance and the loca­tion can be daunt­ing. But after express­ing an inter­est in remote, rur­al, and aus­tere med­i­cine, I thought: what bet­ter way to try it for real than to trav­el over 750 kilo­me­tres to the South­west Out­back of Queensland?

My uni­ver­si­ty, Aus­tralian Catholic Uni­ver­si­ty, sent out EOIs for rur­al place­ments at the start of the semes­ter and I thought ​“this would be an excel­lent expe­ri­ence”.

Imme­di­ate­ly I was in awe of the wide-open plains and lim­it­less farms that stretched out around me on the dri­ve from Bris­bane; a huge dif­fer­ence to the packed and busy streets of South Bris­bane where I cur­rent­ly live.

My first shift at Charleville Sta­tion was filled with meet­ing the oth­er Para­medics who worked there, and hear­ing about and learn­ing from their expe­ri­ences, which includ­ed high­way car rollovers, mul­ti-casu­al­ty farm acci­dents, and numer­ous trans­fers to the Roy­al Fly­ing Doc­tor Service.

Through­out my place­ment I met more of the health work­ers oper­at­ing through­out the South­west Health area, such as nurs­es, doc­tors and com­mu­ni­ty engage­ment teams. I was amazed at the calm and relaxed demeanour they showed when talk­ing about car­ing for patients in set­tings where defin­i­tive care may be hun­dreds of kilo­me­tres away. I enjoyed work­ing on road and treat­ing patients in Charleville and hear­ing their sto­ries of lives lived on cat­tle farms as stock­men, or of peo­ple who moved out West for ​‘one year’ and end­ed up stay­ing for 20.

One of the biggest learn­ing points for me when prac­tis­ing para­med­i­cine in a rur­al set­ting was learn­ing how to think out­side the box in rela­tion to how best to treat a patient. In metro ser­vices you are nev­er too far away from a ter­tiary lev­el hos­pi­tal or a crit­i­cal care para­medic, where­as out in Charleville and rur­al Queens­land, para-medics often respond by them­selves and are expect­ed to get the patient in a sta­ble con­di­tion and to the local hos­pi­tal with lit­tle resources.

This has impact­ed my cur­rent prac­tice and made me more excit­ed to explore the dif­fer­ent areas of para­med­i­cine in a rur­al set­ting.

I did get plen­ty of time for trav­el and for see­ing what out­back Queens­land has to offer, and even man­aged to make a trip out to Mut­tabur­ra to see the famous dinosaur – a child­hood dream of mine.

Although my place­ment was short, I learned so much from the para­medics at Charleville Sta­tion that will impact me through­out my career. I want to thank the sta­tion and all those who took the time to men­tor me and teach me. I also want to thank CRANAplus for pro­vid­ing the under­grad­u­ate place­ment schol­ar­ship that made place­ment much eas­i­er to man­age finan­cial­ly, and for their sup­port throughout.