Rural Outback and Remote Paramedic Conference (ROAR) 2021

The Rural Outback and Remote Paramedic Conference is designed specifically for paramedics and allied health professionals working in rural, outback and remote locations.

Panel Discussion– It's 2031; What are paramedics doing now?

Facilitator: Sunny Whitfield, Lecturer - Griffith University School of Medicine (Paramedicine)

Panel Members:

Mitch Mullooly, Member Committee Chair, Aotearoa New Zealand

Krista Reed, Paramedic, Sessional Academic and Research Officer

Nicole Foster, Training and Development, Citadel Medical

Carlton Irving, Flight ICP / Chair - Paramedic Council of New Zealand (Chair Te Kaunihera Manapou

Biographies:

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.

Mitch Mullooly

Mitch is a Health and Wellness Strategist supporting the wellbeing of emergency first responders. Mitch has spent more than two decades as a Paramedic in the pre-hospital emergency environment and has a long-held passion for healthy living and wellbeing within the international emergency services community.

Krista Reed

Krista Reed is a paramedic and sessional academic at Western Sydney University teaching in both postgraduate and undergraduate levels in health science, paramedicine and public health. Krista is also a research officer for the WSU School of Medicine. Krista obtained a Masters of Health Science in 2017 with a dissertation exploring the use of saultogenic approaches in paramedicine and continues this research as her PhD topic at Monash University. Krista has practiced in both rural and metropolitan settings in the US and Australia. Krista researches in the areas of salutogenesis, community paramedicine, social determinants of health and rural and remote health more broadly.

Nicole Foster

Nicole is an Australian paramedic with a Master’s in Public Health and Tropical Medicine and is a Fellow of the Academy of Wilderness Medicine. Her career began in the Northern Territory of Australia and continued internationally with NGOs and NFPs in Nepal, Tanzania and Europe. Nicole is a core faculty member with the College of Remote and Offshore Medicine in Europe and returned home to Australia last year to work as an exploration paramedic. She is currently working to create an international standard for Remote Area Paramedics with Citadel Medical in Perth.

Carlton Irving

Tēnā Koutou,He uri ahau ō Te Whakatōhea, No Ōpōtiki ahau. E noho ana au ki Ōtepoti inaianei, he manapou me he tauira takuta taku mahi. (Greetings, I am a descendant of Te Whakatōhea, I am from Ōpōtiki. I live in Dunedin now, I work as a manapou and as a medical student.) Carlton hails from the east coast of the North Island and is of Māori ancestry. For most of the last two decades Carlton has worked in ambulance, the last decade as an ICP mostly in the aeromedical/rescue environment operationally. Outside of operations Carlton helped to set up the Māori advisory group for ambulance in NZ. Developed out of hospital referral pathways and systems for high need low acuity patients and set up a charity to improve access to education and healthcare for remote and rural communities.