About the RRESS guidelines
The RRESS guidelines provide best practice recommendations for standardisation of resources in rural and remote health care facilities in Queensland with emergency services assessed as Level 1 or Level 2 according to the Clinical Services Capability Framework for public and licensed private health facilities v.3.2 (2014). Find your facility's level.
Using these guidelines standardises emergency resources to provide safe, consistent and evidenced care to patients during emergency events.
How to use the guidelines
All staff responsible for maintaining facility emergency resources are encouraged to read the associated guideline (not checklist) to set up your:
- emergency equipment
- resuscitation trolley
- emergency procedural kits
- emergency response packs.
Each guideline addresses a number of quality and safety requirements including:
- how the guidelines are developed
- whether your facility requires an emergency response pack
- local inclusion, exclusion or alteration of resources
- auditing requirements
- colour and layout of resource kits, packs and drawers
- how often resources are checked using the associated guideline checklist
- safe and secure use of RRESS resource medicines
Use the checklist that comes with each guideline to make sure your facility has everything set up correctly.
Comparing emergency response resources
The emergency resources in these guidelines differ from those of large hospitals.
Resuscitation trolley contents have been designed for space efficiency and use with emergency procedural kits and emergency response packs. This provides the most efficient short term emergency support before evacuation.
Statewide emergency, retrieval specialists and rural and remote clinicians determined the following systems be implemented at a minimum:
- a resuscitation trolley with basic resources to support advanced cardiopulmonary resuscitation
- emergency procedural kits to complement the resuscitation trolley with systems-targeted resources (e.g. complex circulation or imminent birth and obstetric emergencies)
- an emergency response pack to take when responding to an acute incident beyond the doors of the facility, with or without specific emergency procedural kits.
Read the corresponding RRESS guideline for further information or email orrh-businessservices@health.qld.gov.au.