00:00An excellent neurosurgeon called Craig Winter in the rural Brisbane has been teaching lots
00:07of us around regional Queensland how to do emergency brain surgery. Just two of us from
00:12Rockhampton have been down and he rang both my colleague and myself who've been on that
00:17course to find that neither of us were local and available. Chris had had a hard day at
00:22the office and I was in Brisbane at a party when I got this call. There I was wondering
00:29what to do. He told me there was a gentleman down in the emergency department who wouldn't
00:33survive the transfer down to Brisbane which would take several hours so he asked if I
00:38could get in there. I was aware of this device that we'd purchased sitting in the corner and
00:43not actually commissioned yet and said hang on I've got a very strong-willed young female
00:49surgeon on call. I know she's up for it. I'll give her a call and I put the two of them in
00:55contact with each other and then went about trying to get that device into the theatre
00:59and dial in. So you were facilitating a connection between a neurosurgeon in Brisbane and the surgeon
01:07who was on call with the patient who was then able to perform this operation that she'd never
01:12done before. Talk us through this equipment. I mean what exactly does it consist of? I imagine
01:17it's a bit more advanced than a zoom call. Well it's a boom cart that has a 4k camera that you can
01:26manipulate. You set the system up so it's pointing roughly in the right direction and then remotely
01:32you can control the focus, the zoom, the pan of angle and getting in the right place. So I was actually
01:40controlling the camera and then sharing that screen to Craig who was sitting in a laptop elsewhere in
01:48Brisbane and I could see him there and he could then communicate through the device to the surgeons
01:54to advise them how they were going. He was very good. He had a quick phone call to Leanne. He explained
02:01roughly what she was going to do and Leanne called in Ruth who's one of our orthopaedic surgeons also on call
02:07and the two of them then set up this case. And you say that this patient you know wouldn't have
02:13survived a transfer to Brisbane. Is the idea that this would only be used in those real emergency
02:19situations that were potentially life or death? I think it's for a place like ours where we have
02:26two peripheral hospitals with general practitioners who are surgically trained and they get stretched.
02:34It's the ability for us to support them. We have GP obstetricians who also find things they don't see
02:42very often and my obstetric colleagues from the centre can call to them and they can have support
02:49for this as well. And we're using it as a training tool for GP registrars and our own registrars if
02:56they're away from the centre to do things. So it's not just for emergencies, it's for all sorts of things.
03:01And how were you able to get your hands on this piece of equipment?
03:07Well I originally saw a version of this equipment some three years ago at a meeting and I was
03:13approached by somebody who knew my partner who'd been in similar industries in the past and asked
03:20whether we'd take it on and saw central Queensland as an excellent test bed for it. It took quite some
03:26time. We didn't have financial support from the hospital at the time so we went out to our local
03:32charity CQ Shines and they agreed it was a great thing to support. We travelled around showcasing to
03:39local industries in Gladstone and Emerald and Rockhampton and trying to put the word out there
03:44and then raising money with evening balls and so on and the donations of patients and other members of
03:50the community into CQ Shines to support it. And how expensive are they? Is it feasible that other
03:57hospitals could potentially fundraise for their own or do you think this is something that if it was to
04:01be rolled out should be government funded? I'm not sure if we've got the best deal because we're first
04:08off it's it's priced at an amount that is it should be supported if you can prove that it's going to
04:16work and I guess we need to show that for people and show that it makes a difference. It's difficult
04:23to put a cost on a life isn't it but I'm sure it was worth it just for this one.
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