Rapid Response is the College’s monthly eNewsletter providing current and important information from the College.

Membership

The College's membership team are always available to assist with your queries, so reach out of there is something we can help with. We are working on strengthening our member exclusives offerings in both Australia and New Zealand, and are focused on planning for our upcoming international conference ACPIC2023.

We would love to see you at the conference in Melbourne. It's a great opportunity to come together and network with other members, our wonderful line-up of speakers, College staff, committee members and Board directors. We encourage you to share the conference link with your friends and colleagues and remind them that if they join the College, they will have access to the subsidised member-only pricing. Here is a link to a handy PDF you can share with them.

A stronger membership means the College can continue to do more of what you want and need - advocating for more career opportunities, workforce flexibility, recognition of capabilities, and health and wellbeing; plus our ever-expanding range of CPD content and education - more events, webinars, podcasts, eLearning and workshops designed for your needs. If you love the College, spread the word! We even have a Member Referral program for you - check it out here.

Advocacy

Twelve months ago, the College was invited to collaborate as an advisory member of the National Rural Health Commission’s Ngayubah Gadan (Coming Together) Consensus Statement. After a year of consultation and development, the Statement was released last month by Assistant Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention and the Assistant Minister for Rural and Regional Health, the Hon. Emma McBride MP, and endorsed by over 50 health stakeholders including the College.     This landmark Statement defines Rural and Remote Multidisciplinary Health Teams within the contemporary Australian context, recognising the contribution of the health workforce in meeting the unique health needs in rural and remote communities. John Bruning, College CEO, caught up with Prof. Faye McMillan, Deputy National Rural Health Commissioner, this week to record an Advocacy in Conversation session that explores the creation, connection and impact of this Statement, a must-listen podcast. Listen here. You can access the Statement here.

Throughout June, College representatives met with healthcare stakeholders from across Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, and alliance groups on matters regarding innovative models of care, capabilities, and opportunities for the paramedic profession.  

Events

Early bird tickets for the Australasian College of Paramedicine’s International Conference (ACPIC23) are now on sale. We are excited to be bringing you a day of workshops plus two full conference days of content that has been formulated specifically for paramedics. The conference program can be viewed here.

Tickets to workshops are limited to enable us to create a better learning experience for those attending. The workshop program can be viewed here.

We are thrilled that Samuel Johnson OAM will be our guest speaker at our Gala Dinner on Thursday 14 September. Samuel is a loved Australian actor, and is the co-founder of Love Your Sister, a million-strong village of everyday Australians who are committed to vanquishing cancer.

ACPIC23 has been structured to equip you with information and skills to assist you to lead the profession with your knowledge, evolve in your career, and impact others in a positive way.

Visit the dedicate ACPIC23 website to find out more and to book your tickets.

Education

We do professional learning differently.

What sets one learning opportunity apart from the others? Adaptive educational strategies.

Adaptive education strategies allow us to tailor what the learner is offered based on a model of the intended goals, preferences, knowledge, and experience. To do this we need to know our learners and we listen to the feedback you provide to personalise your learning and meet your individual learning goals more efficiently.

Your feedback matters. We listen to your experience with our courses, and we adapt and modify them in response to your needs. Overwhelmingly the feedback is positive and this helps us just as much. It reaffirms we are on the right track, but if there is a way we can improve on a learning outcome, we want to hear it. In response to some of your questions, comments and feedback our team review the learning to ensure not just accuracy, but flow and functionality as well. This means we might release a new or updated version of a course, as we have done with Hyperemesis Gravidarum. You gave us some feedback on the assessments and asked for more research to underpin the knowledge, and we have updated the course to reflect this. Thank you to all of you who take the time to complete the surveys at the end of the modules. It does make a difference.

Microlearning is also now available and FREE to everyone, regardless of membership status - so you can share with your colleagues and introduce them to College content. Our microlearning courses are small snippets that cover one concept. Whilst in small chunks, you are still able to include them in your CPD portfolio and they are very relevant to professional learning, feeding into our larger eLearning modules. You can find microlearning on in the eLearning section on the College website. Why not try one next time you have 5-10 mins?

Research

The College currently has multiple opportunities available to foster and build the research capacity of our members. These include participating in research opportunities, learning from our Talking Research webinars, and submitting an EOI for the 2024 Paramedic Mentoring Research Program.

Registrations for our new webinar in the Talking Research series, The Patient Experience, scheduled for Wednesday 16 August, are now open. Join experts in the field, Associate Professor Belinda Flanagan, Robbie King and Associate Professor Mats Holmberg, as they discuss current research on the often-neglected patient perspective of care. For those of you who have missed out on previous Talking Research webinars, all recordings are now available and count towards 1.5 CPD hours, which you can of course, record in your free College CPD tracker.

The College is committed to promoting quality research relevant to the paramedicine discipline and takes pride in fostering research at all levels within the field. If you are interested in making a valuable contribution to the profession by assisting paramedicine researchers in addressing critical questions, click here to find out more and to participate in our current research participation opportunities.

If you are a registered paramedic with an interest in getting involved in research but don't know where to start, why not consider joining our Paramedic Mentoring Research Program? Crafted with a clear focus on providing registered paramedics with a direct opportunity to learn about research from seasoned paramedic academics, we are delighted to announce that EOIs for our 2024 program are now open.

For more research news and information, click here.

Thanks from the College team, and we hope you have a great month ahead.