Sit back, close your eyes, and imagine the landscape of your childhood. Think of how it has changed over time. Perhaps you grew up near the ocean, where tidal surges changed the shifting sands on a daily basis; maybe you’re a child of the hills and the mountains, where gentle mist and falling rain slowly, softly changed the landscape, obscuring it, remodeling it, slowly over seasons and years carving new channels and new paths. Are you imagining the hot, dry desert, where gentle breezes and howling winds can change the landscape in an instant, and then change it back again seconds later? Do you picture floodplains or rainforests? Alpine meadows or vast plains?
The forces that alter our natural land are reflected in the forces that have changed the landscape of healthcare over the years – in the global tides of the pandemic, the ebbs and flows of the national health workforce, the quiet whisper of the ageing population, and the raging force of natural disasters and climate change.
As emergency care providers in regional, rural and remote areas, we work in a landscape that bears unmistakable scars from health inequality, a landscape that is forever changing and shifting around us. But through innovation we work together to heal ourselves and our communities, we rejuvenate our landscape, and we celebrate the very challenges that make regional, rural, and remote healthcare so rewarding.
Join us in at the inaugural Regional, Rural and Remote Emergency Medicine Conference 2024 in Darwin/Gulumerrdgen, the gateway to the Northern Territory, where the Larrakia people have lived on, and cared for, the landscape for more than 60,000 years. Our theme is Shaping Our Landscape, as we come together from Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia and beyond to share our experiences and expertise; to celebrate the landscapes in which we work, and live, and thrive.
Join us in Darwin, where you will be challenged to innovate, invited to celebrate, and encouraged to rejuvenate!
–Dr Karly Field and Dr Stephen Gourley
Co-Convenors
ACEM Regional, Rural and Remote Emergency Medicine Conference 2024
This is a hybrid event to be delivered both in-person and online.
