Dr Colin Priestland Attended Australian Health Practitioner Registration Agency (AHPRA) Sedation Recertification Training, 2021

After the 2020 Covid-postponement of Australian Health Practitioner Registration Agency (AHPRA) sedation recertification training, the 2021 – 2 day course/reassessment went ahead in the Gold Coast on 28th and 29th May 2021 for Dental practitioners and Specialists who are qualified and endorsed to provide intravenous sedation.

The course participants were taken through all the technical skills of airway management, resuscitation, life support and defibrillation technical skills to ensure they had perfected those skills before moving on to face a range of patient management scenarios on computer driven patient simulator models (Sim-man) to work alongside their own practice teams to identify medical emergencies, take correct management decisions and initiate resuscitation measures to correct the patients condition.

Dr Colin Priestland attended with both his registered nurses from NQ Surgical Dentistry, Lauren Camillieri and Anndrea Steinhardt to update their emergency management skills and achieve recertification by the Australian Society of Dental Anaesthesiology (ASDA) on behalf of the Australian Health Practitioner Registration Agency (AHPRA) who oversee and manage the standards of care provided by this group of highly trained and skilled practitioners.

Colin, Lauren and Anndrea faced two days  of scenarios to diagnose patients suffering from a range of medical emergencies that may arise in conscious, sedated or unconscious patients to ensure the correct treatment was provided to ensure patients were safely stabilised and transferred on to hospital for definitive medical management.

This is an annual commitment by AHPRA-endorsed dental practitioners and their teams to maintain their advanced resuscitation and life support skills and to ensure safe practice and maintain high quality patient care.

At NQ Surgical Dentistry, Colin, Lauren and Anndrea provide the full range of dental treatment under intravenous sedation for patients referred to them and for patients who come to the practice directly.

Anxious and phobic patients who cannot accept routine dental care in general dental practice and those requiring more complex surgical management are referred to them by their own dentists or GPs.

Some patients are unsuitable for in-practice sedation and in those cases Colin will treat them in the Mater Hospital Day Surgery Unit under general anaesthetic with a consultant anaesthetist where he has a weekly day case operating list.

Colin has been providing this much needed service in Townsville for the past 19 years and has worked with Lauren for 18 years and with Anndrea for 6 years.  They work in a close-knit highly skilled team to ensure the safe management of patients in their practice.  Colin is the only AHPRA endorsed sedation trained dental surgeon operating in Townsville, and sees many patients referred in from other towns in the region.