A TEAM of medical specialists fed up with the underfunding of emergency departments across the country have set up their own fund to boost care for frontline patients.
The Emergency Medicine Foundation, launched across the country today including the Gold Coast, will fund research projects and education campaigns for what it says is the busiest frontline healthcare field and the most underfunded medical research specialty area in Australia.
Each year more than 7 million people present at emergency departments nationally, with 19,000 admissions a day.
But chair of the not-for-profit organisation, Dr David Rosengren, said that demand was not being recognised at a national level.
“There’s an absolute void of medical research capability at a national level,” Dr Rosengren said.
“This is stepping into a void that’s never been given appropriate attention in the past.”
The foundation launched with a new national education campaign aimed at combating a killer almost 10 times more deadly than the nation’s annual road toll.
About 10,000 Australians die from sudden cardiac arrest every year and more than 50 per cent never make it to hospital.
Senior emergency physician Dr Andrew Walker, of John Flynn Private Hospital, helped launch the campaign today, having recently suffered a heart attack and being revived by members of the Tallebudgera Surf Club with a defibrillator.
The foundation is trying to raise awareness of publicly-accessible Automatic External Defibrillators or ‘AEDs’ for heart attack victims.
Source: GoldCoast Bulletin