Your donations recently provided two Paediatric Airway Trolleys for the Flinders Medical Centre Emergency Department (ED).

These ‘one-stop-shops’ created by ED staff, provide them with all the equipment they need to resuscitate a critically ill child and intubate their airway.

At their fingertips, staff can now access carefully grouped together and colour coded supplies specifically matched to a child’s size and weight range.

Approximately 20,000 children will present at Flinders Medical Centre’s Paediatric Emergency Department each year, with two or more children requiring treatment in the paediatric resuscitation bay each day.

During the year, between five and 10 of these children will require intubation in a bid to save their lives after suffering major trauma, seizures, pneumonia, or infections like meningococcal.

Paediatric ED Nurse Unit Manager Megan Eastaughffe said the new trolleys meant staff could react as quickly as possible in the most stressful situations.

“Intubating a child doesn’t happen all that frequently, but when it happens it’s high stakes and we need to get it right,” Megan says.

“There’s such a variable amount of equipment needed in these situations and doctors and nurses have to get the right-sized supplies and prepare very quickly.

“So, by using trolleys with an international colour coding system, and grouping together all the equipment needed for each child’s weight range, it means we’re prepared and things are very clear in those stressful situations.”