The latest recruits completed two-and-a-half weeks of intensive training in trauma and retrieval techniques before starting duty at Orange.

While all have at least eight years of clinical experience at teaching hospitals, for most this is their first exposure to delivering trauma and retrieval medicine in a rural community.

Doctors with NRMA CareFlight recently completed their busiest year extending critical care treatment to 320 patients across the Central West.

From the helicopter base at Orange, CareFlight rosters doctors on duty every day, to fly or drive to patients needing critical care support.

These responses – close to one every day – demonstrate CareFlight’s ongoing commitment to rural communities, particularly the Central West, in delivering the highest standard of care at injury sites and when transferring patients to major hospitals.

The Central West continues to be covered by NRMA CareFlight’s mantle of medical care under the charity’s long-term agreement with the NSW Ambulance Service which started in May 2007.

Of the 320 missions last year, half were to accident and injury sites. The other half were missions in which the doctors undertook critical care medical retrieval transfers from the following hospitals:

Bathurst (40)

Canowindra (3)

Cowra (6)

Dubbo (20)

Forbes (8)

Grenfell (4)

Lithgow (32)

Mudgee (16)

Oberon (4)

Orange (23)

Parkes (8)

Peak Hill (4)

Rylstone (7).

In total, over the past year, NRMA CareFlight doctors provided their expert care to a total of 1376 patients under the charity’s medical contract with the Ambulance Service.

In addition NRMA CareFlight operates its own helicopter at Westmead which provides rapid-response trauma support to seriously injured children and adults across Sydney, the Southern Highlands, Blue Mountains and Central Coast.

The charity also has established a national network of CareFlight Air Ambulance services with bases in Perth, Darwin and Sydney where its doctors and nurses fly on medi-jets to within Australia, South-East Asia and the Western Pacific.

For more information on NRMA CareFlight, or to make a donation on-line, check the charity’s web site at www.careflight.org