LifeAid Emergency Care

05/06/2026

Emergency Response Team support is often discussed in terms of equipment, vehicles and qualifications. Those things matter. But one of the most important parts of effective ERT support is understanding that no two environments are the same, and no environment stays the same forever.

A mine site in northern Australia.
A fire-affected landscape.
An icy mountain road.

Each presents different risks, different operational challenges and different demands on the people working there.

Over time we've learned that effective support is not just about arriving with capability. It's about understanding the environment, adapting to changing conditions, building relationships with crews and developing familiarity with the places where people work.

The best ERT support combines preparation, experience and local understanding - because conditions change, and the response has to change with them. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/field-note-things-you-cant-buy-kirstie-close-5isec

When people think about Emergency Response Teams, they often think about equipment. Vehicles.

03/06/2026

What does it mean to provide healthcare in a remote environment?

Sometimes it means understanding the place just as much as the medicine.

A few years ago, LifeAid was invited to support Whelans during the Bogong High Plains Road landslip remediation works. What began as a relatively straightforward deployment became a much longer journey. Our crews remained involved long enough to watch the mountain transform. The same project experienced snow, heavy rainfall, changing access conditions and everything in between.

The photos below were all taken during the same project.
Different seasons.
Different conditions.
Different risks.
The healthcare response had to evolve alongside them.

While emergency response capability is an important part of these projects, much of the work involved primary healthcare, preventative care and supporting workers over the long term. Helping people stay healthy, safe and able to continue their work in a challenging environment.

One of the lessons we took from Bogong was that remote healthcare is never just about people.
It's also about place.
Understanding the terrain.
Understanding the weather.
Understanding how work changes as conditions change.

The medicine matters. But the environment shapes almost everything else.

We're grateful to have been part of a project that not only restored an important road connection, but reminded us how closely communities, work and place are interlinked.

27/05/2026

LifeAid is recruiting an Operations Coordinator.

This role sits at the intersection of emergency medical operations, training, deployments, logistics, workforce coordination, and the organised chaos that comes with supporting people in complex environments.

We’re looking for someone who can help build systems that are calm, practical, scalable, and human. Someone comfortable moving between spreadsheets, field realities, phone calls, deployment planning, and the thousand small details that keep operations running.

The work spans training operations, remote and industrial healthcare, emergency response support, and event medical services across a wide operational footprint. The goal is to keep oversight and systems deeply connected to the people doing the work on the ground.

If that sounds like your kind of environment, we’d love to hear from you.

Operations Coordinator supporting medical, training & remote operations across dynamic regional and deployment environments.

08/05/2026

24/04/2026

On Anzac Day, we remember not only those who served, but those who cared for the wounded in the harshest conditions imaginable.

From battlefield stretcher-bearers to the earliest aeromedical evacuations, their work changed the story of survival.
Care moved closer.
Time to treatment shortened.

That legacy lives on in every medic, every responder, every act of showing up when it matters most.

At LifeAid, we carry that forward.
Not as history. As practice.

Lest we forget.

🇦🇺 25 April

22/04/2026

Thoughts from one of the LifeAid Directors, Kirstie Close:

In the lead-up to Anzac Day, I’ve been thinking about my granddad, Bill, for a whole bunch of reasons. He was a surgeon in a military hospital in Kure, Japan during the Korean War.

Around that time, helicopters started being used to evacuate wounded soldiers more systematically. It changed everything. Patients weren’t arriving days later after long transfers. They were getting there faster. Still critically injured, but with a much better chance.

He saw that shift happening in real time (while I saw it on M*A*S*H... cue the theme song). It meant different decisions, different pressures. Care became more than just what happened in the operating theatre - there were shifts in coordination, timing, and continuity.

Strange to think of that period - chopper rescues now feel so standard, but it went through the process of change and impacting what chances of survival looked like. I think about that a lot with what we do at LifeAid Emergency Care.

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Image from the Australian War Memorial - Kure, Japan. 5 May 1952. Lieutenant General Sydney F. Rowell (left), the Chief of the General Staff (CGS), Australian Military Forces, made an inspection of the Headquarters of the British Commonwealth Forces Korea, at Kure. During his inspection of the British Commonwealth Hospital at Kure he stopped for a chat with a young Korean veteran, Private A. W. King of Wee Waa, NSW, a member of the 3rd Battalion, The Royal Australian Regiment (3RAR). Accompanying the CGS is Lieutenant General William Bridgeford, Commander of British Commonwealth troops in Korea.