About this episode:
Dan O'Brien leads a panel of remote and austere prehospital care specialists from Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand to discuss their experiences working in remote and austere settings. Dan is joined by Danielle Little, Sunny Whitfield, Kerryn Wratt and Nicole Foster, whose collective expertise covers prehospital care in offshore, expedition, film and wilderness medicine, military, mining, exploration, and construction industries, and provide insight into what it is like to work in these environments.
About Nicole Foster
Nicole Foster is an Australian registered paramedic who has worked as a paramedic and educator on four continents, specialising in remote and austere prehospital care. Nicole is a working group member of the International Committee of Austere Emergency Care, the International Board of Speciality Certification (Wilderness Paramedic) in the United States and the Community Paramedicine working group with the Australian College of Paramedicine. She has contributed to the NATO Special Operations Combat Medic Remote and Austere Medicine field guide for practitioners. She founded the International Health Research Institute – a European research and consultancy company focusing on improving health systems, technology, and health professionals in remote and austere locations.
About Kerryn Wratt
Kerryn has 20+ years experience as a frontline intensive care and wilderness paramedic having worked in Victoria and Tasmania as well as internationally in New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and Nepal. In 2012 Kerryn received a scholarship from the Emergency Services Foundation to explore emergency response systems that deploy medical personnel into remote and wilderness environments throughout North America. Kerryn’s subsequent report helped inform the establishment of Ambulance Victoria’s statewide paramedic wilderness response system.
In 2018 and 2019 Kerryn delivered Basic Wilderness Life Support courses on the Annapurna Base camp trek in Nepal and in 2020 he volunteered with the Himalayan Rescue Association at a high altitude medical clinic in Pheriche. In 2020 Kerryn completed his Fellowship of Wilderness Medicine in association with the Wilderness Medicine Society in the USA. In 2021 the WMS awarded Kerryn the Warren D Bowman award for services to Wilderness Medicine, the first time this had been awarded outside of the USA. Kerryn is currently based in Nelson, New Zealand as a Critical Care Flight Paramedic on the Nelson/Marlborough Rescue Helicopter and serves as founding President of the Australasian Wilderness and Expedition Medicine Society (AWEMS).
About Steve 'Sunny' Whitfield
Sunny is an Australian based academic, paramedic, expedition leader, geographer, and writer with experience in prehospital health care, humanitarian operations, expedition medicine, flight medicine, and emergency service development. He has worked in the Himalayas, Pacific Islands, Central Asia, the Middle East, and the Arctic and founded Medics Beyond Borders to provide creative solutions to impact gaps in prehospital and primary health care services in low GDP countries. Sunny is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, a Fellow of the Academy of Wilderness Medicine, a member of The Association of Professionals in Humanitarian Assistance and Protection, and a member of the Australasian Medical Writers Association.
About Danielle Little
Danielle has 14+ years experience in frontline ambulance. Danielle has worked offshore and has remote experience on the Shell Prelude/Arcadia project, ENSCO 107 Jack Up Rig, Sapura Constructor SubSea Vessel. Danielle has worked with the Australian Defence Force for live fire exercises, involved in the commissioning phase Christmas Island Detention Centre.