In 1997, CRANAplus received fund­ing from the Aus­tralian Depart­ment of Health to devel­op and imple­ment a pilot pro­gram of remote emer­gency care courses.

Rose­mary Moyle’s man­ag­er at Roy­al Fly­ing Doc­tor Ser­vice (RFDS), Geri Mal­one, told her about the oppor­tu­ni­ty. She decid­ed she’d ​“give it a go” and became one of the first facil­i­ta­tors to ever deliv­er a REC course.

In 2021, Rose­mary deliv­ered her final course for CRANAplus, an Advanced Life Sup­port course in Ade­laide which marked her 41^st course since 2013, when the cur­rent method of record keep­ing was introduced.

Her long­stand­ing involve­ment saw her deliv­er edu­ca­tion in all Aus­tralian states and ter­ri­to­ries, and as far afield as Christ­mas Island.

What inspired Rose­mary to facil­i­tate for 24 years?

“I love being in clin­ics, hear­ing the sto­ries,” Rose­mary says. ​“Meet­ing, face to face, peo­ple who I might have talked to on the phone before, or who were there when I went to pick up a patient [with the RFDS]. We could talk about that and how that turned out.

​“I love the lit­tle out­back com­mu­ni­ties and the peo­ple that work there. I remem­ber we deliv­ered a course up in north-west­ern Aus­tralia once, and the peo­ple who were attend­ing hadn’t been to such a course before.

​“We start­ed talk­ing about the ABCs – air­ways, breath­ing, cir­cu­la­tion – and some­one came up to me lat­er and he said, ​‘you know, I’ve nev­er heard of this ABC stuff before, but I’m going to remem­ber that. That’s good, I can remem­ber ABC.’ That sticks in my mind.

“I love the hos­pi­tal­i­ty and the appre­ci­a­tion of the peo­ple in the bush,” Rose­mary continues.

“I know myself hav­ing lived in the coun­try how dif­fi­cult it is to get to the city some­times. You’ve got to get a course, accom­mo­da­tion, time off work, time away from home. To be able to do it local­ly is so much better.

“We did a course in out­back Queens­land and one of the stu­dents was a lady who worked on a cat­tle sta­tion. She drove the truck in to do the course – a semi-trail­er – because that was her mode of trans­port. I was in awe that she could dri­ve down the main street and turn up that way.

“Also, I always learn some­thing from the cours­es – some­thing local, like a local treat­ment for, say, jel­ly­fish stings,” she adds.

“There are oth­er places we’ve been where they’ve just had a bush­fire or flood. Talk­ing with the local staff about how they’ve dealt with that was quite a learn­ing expe­ri­ence for me.”

How has remote health changed over time?

“Edu­ca­tion is more avail­able nowa­days,” Rose­mary says. ​“Staff are much more will­ing to par­take in edu­ca­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties – they grasp them wher­ev­er they can.

“There are some very pro­fes­sion­al nurs­es out there that are very expe­ri­enced, and they enjoy their jobs. They have to be quite resilient peo­ple with lots of oth­er skills apart from work­ing in clin­i­cal health care, such as dri­ving a 4WD or chang­ing a tyre. They might have to report on the weath­er or be the post office for that par­tic­u­lar place.

“Some places are very well equipped, and oth­ers hard­ly have any­thing at all to work with. How­ev­er, I think that has changed quite a bit.
[In the present day] it’s much more stan­dard­ised across the health ser­vices, which makes it eas­i­er for peo­ple to use equipment.

“[Remote health] still has its chal­lenges,” Rose­mary reflects. ​“There are still staff short­ages, there’s still burn-out, there’s still a lot of things that come up to make peo­ple less resilient, I sup­pose – but they’re the salt of the earth Aus­tralians, I think, out there working.”

How have REC cours­es changed since the 1990s?

“Cours­es were organ­ised dif­fer­ent­ly [back then],” Rose­mary says, with a laugh. ​“We used to have the old pen and paper, and print­ed notes and lec­tures, and a class-room type situation.

“There’s a big­ger group of facil­i­ta­tors now, many from vary­ing back­grounds. At the begin­ning, we had to write our own lec­tures, and what you brought to them depend­ed on what sort of back­ground you had. Now, they are stan­dard­ised and for­mal, so it stops that vari­ance in knowledge.

“Over time the empha­sis has become less on lec­tures and more on prac­tice… We try to make it as much fun as pos­si­ble. I think peo­ple enjoy less empha­sis of sit­ting in a class­room; they enjoy the hands-on, and the abil­i­ty to chat to each oth­er in small groups.

​“CRANA has grown,” Rose­mary says in con­clu­sion. ​“It’s offer­ing more than it ever did in the past, and it is adjust­ing to the needs of the cli­mate of health. Whether it be COVID, or work­ing safe­ly in a com­mu­ni­ty, CRANA ven­tures across all of that.”

The CRANAplus Edu­ca­tion Team extends a heart­felt thank you to Rose­mary Moyle for her long­stand­ing com­mit­ment and val­ued con­tri­bu­tions as a Facilitator.