Your monthly clinical update covering:

Mandatory VVED Consults for Infants <28 Days – trends, rationale for policy, clarifications, and case example demonstrating impact.

Stroke updates - performing ACT-FAST on all MASS positive patients, changes to VACIS and a plug for IV access.

Complex Paediatric Respiratory Patients – Managing patients on home non-invasive ventilation, maintaining continuity of care, and upcoming resources.

Trauma Updates –

• Blood component therapy expansion and compliance requirements.
• STAB-5 mnemonic and minimising scene time in major trauma.
• PANDA trial enrolment reminder.

Standing-Height Falls in Elderly – Missed spinal injury cases, cultural pendulum shift, guideline review, and call for feedback.

Manual Handling & Patient Safety in ED Cohorting – Safe movement of high-risk patients and preventing deterioration during cohorting.

Paper of the Month – Danish machine learning study outperforming NEWS2 for predicting deterioration from first-five-minute vitals, with explainable AI.

Equipment Committee Updates – New traction splints, medication safety devices via 3D printing, thermal blanket effectiveness, and syringe driver software updates.

Professional Development & Resources – Coroner’s Communiques, ACP International Conference, new paramedic podcasts.

Small Steps to Transform Practice –

1. Treat elderly standing-height falls as potential spinal injuries.
2. Minimise scene time for major trauma unless safety or critical intervention requires it.

Further resources

ACP Conference

Thermal blanket study

Machine learning study

STAB-5

Coroner's communique

Get in touch

clinicalguidelines@ambulance.vic.gov.au

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James: ⁠⁠⁠@JamesOz1⁠⁠ | @jamesoz1.bsky.social

Ben: ⁠@ben_meadley⁠

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