The most downloaded episode - The High Acuity Response Unit (HARU) & Critical Care with Stephen Rashford

This is a repost of an episode I recorded back in the early years
of podcasting. It remains the most downloaded episode of the
entire podcast. Steve Rashford is the medical director of The
Queensland Ambulance Service (QAS) with 5,000 staff and 1,300
response vehicles. In the episode Steve gives some of his
perspectives of a pre-hospital careers spanning over 20 years in
duration within multiple services. QAS has a contemporary
approach to clinical service delivery and innovation in
prehospital trauma care. It also operates a tiered system of
pre-hospital care with Advanced Care Paramedics (ACPs), Intensive
Care Paramedics (ICPs) and a smaller cohort of HARU Paramedics.


In this episode we discuss a variety of topics:


High Acuity Response Unit (HARU) both its inception and the
clinical remit for the HARU.

Governance around the HARU program and provider quality
assurance for some of the procedures (RSI, on-call advice, blood
products and the bleeding patients).

Quality improvement and where the program is heading

The lessons learnt building the HARU and ICP schemes in QLD.



I hope you enjoy this episode as I found it both insightful and
helpful to look at how other systems approach high performing
teams and continuous improvement.



Please feel free to reach out to me at eoinwalker@hotmail.com as
I always welcome feedback.