Enduring partnerships: education
Sharing our new resources and learning how they may serve extensive and diverse communities is an important platform underpinning the Australian Stroke Alliance’s program. We are developing new resources to serve and enable different communities, particularly our most disadvantaged.
Working with communities
Working with the Stroke Foundation and our Consumer Council, we have received strong and consistent feedback that an education program must support a new system of care. As we begin preparing for the testing special stroke road and air ambulances, we are listening and learning from Indigenous organisations, stroke survivors and rural health organisations. Together, we will ensure communities are aware of the services being trialled, that the services meet their requirements, and deliver the fundamental message to call for help urgently when a stroke is suspected.
A mobile service would need to do a lot of education, health promotion and prevention, as well as rapid response to acute events.
Working in partnership with Indigenous organisations, the Royal Flying Doctor Service and the Stroke Foundation, we are engaging with the wider community. Accessible, evidence-based information will be developed to overcome geographic barriers. Consumers will understand the benefits of pre-hospital stroke intervention and urgent medical treatment.
Educating our rural clinical workforce
One size does not fit all. The Australian Stroke Alliance will leverage its extensive clinical networks to build educational packages that are customised to local needs. This will offer deep engagement at rural and remote clinician level to bridge the gap between current and best practice care.
We will work with existing organisations and networks, across Australia, addressing rural nursing, paramedical and medical practitioners.
Some of the organisations we will work with, via our Rural and Remote Health Advisory Council, include:
- Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine
- National Rural Health Alliance
- Royal Australian College of General Practitioners
- Rural Doctors Association of Australia
- Spinifex Network
- CRANAplus
- University departments of rural health
- Royal College of Nurses
- Australian Nursing Federation
- Australian Rural Health Education Network
- Federation of Rural Australian Medical Educators
- The Rural Health Workforce Network
Nurses
Nurses are embedded into the landscape of rural and remote communities and play an enormously important role. The Australian Stroke Alliance’s development of a digital hub will facilitate knowledge transfer, clinician engagement in continued professional development, and enable rapid dissemination of stroke research findings. This is especially important as we begin development of best practice guidelines for pre-hospital stroke care, by air or road.
The Alliance’s Education Platform
Working in partnership with communities and organisations, we will:
- Create telestroke training programs for the rural and remote health workforce
- Develop a suite of site seminars, web-based education and online tools
- Create simulation training resources
- Validate our national digital hub as an effective tool for workforce training
- Develop specific “stroke paramedic” training for rural paramedics
- Leverage our Rural and Remote Health Advisory Council to drive development of protocols
- Work with university partners to develop new medical, nursing and paramedic training programs including in digital health technologies and pre-hospital stroke care
- Drive the creation of new workforce capacity by training, mentoring and fostering the next generation of research fellows and postgraduate students who will later form the backbone of a national pre-hospital stroke network.
Stroke prevention messages will emphasise the need for fast action and the value of telemedicine. Engagement with Indigenous communities will be a priority.
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