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Biomedical subjects

J Pearn

Publications and source records attributed to J Pearn.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources
PubMed1996

First aid in the air.

BACKGROUND: First aid is commonly required during commercial aircraft flights, especially during international flights. An intimidating and sometimes threatening array of in-flight medical emergencies challenge the doctor, flight attendants and other passengers in such medical emergencies. Cramped conditions, difficulties of access to the victim, lack of privacy, cultural and language differences and noise and vibration all compound to increase the difficulties of the normal first aid drills which are required in the management of in-cabin emergencies. Doctors who fly as passengers are liable to be called upon to render first aid in the air. We provide an analysis of the types of medical emergencies encountered during commercial air travel. METHODS: We have reviewed all consecutive in-flight medical incident reports for QANTAS international flights for 1993. All incidents requiring the attention of a doctor were included. RESULTS: A total of 454 significant medical incidents occurred. These included, in rank order, syncope (35%), angina and cardiac emergencies (23%), gastrointestinal conditions (13%), respiratory tract infections and asthma (9%) and anxiety and panic reactions warranting medical intervention (5%). CONCLUSIONS: Syncope, the management of gastrointestinal symptoms and problems of angina comprise over half (58%) of the presenting symptoms which confront a fellow traveller who may coincidentally be a medical practitioner. Problems of anxiety, sleeplessness, airport bustle, immobility, barotrauma, alcohol abuse and mild hypoxia are discussed in the context of precipitating factors which may trigger an in-flight emergency. Psychological problems are very common and challenge the first aider, whether or not he or she is medically trained. We emphasize the necessity for doctors and nurses to be trained in first aid, as a distinct profession in its own right and a series of drills and skills which are distinctive from those of surgery-based health care. The 5% annual increase in air-passenger traffic, predicted for the next two decades, highlights the importance of special training for "first aid in the air'.

Aerospace Medicine↗
PubMed1996

Surgeon-superintendents on convict ships.

Surgeon-superintendents on the convict ships transporting convicted men, women and youths to Australia played a key role in the evolution of medical standards in Australia. The British Transportation Acts of 1717 and 1825 added the punishment of exile and banishment to the prevailing penology of the era, that of retribution and deterrence. The surgeon-superintendents formed a bulwark during the sea voyages (between 88 and 258 days), protecting the convicts against the potential abuses of the time. Between 1787 and 1868, some 160 000 convicts were transported to the open air gaols at Sydney, Norfolk Island, Van Diemen's Land (Hobart, Macquarie Harbour, Maria Island and Port Arthur), Moreton Bay, Melville Island and Fremantle. Seventeen convict ships left England for Australia in 1823 alone. The surgeon-superintendent's role on the high seas evolved over this time from one of amateur casualness with a primary responsibility to the system rather than to individual convicts, to that of a highly efficient, courageous professionalism. It became a new specialty discipline in its own right. Mortality on the convict transportation voyages fell from one in three convicts embarked in 1790 to zero mortality in the convicts transported on the Sultana in 1859. The key role of the surgeon-superintendent, in the context of preventive medicine, is developed in the present paper. Historical nodes in the evolution of the new discipline of prison doctor were the 1814 Report of Redfern (himself a former convict), and the evolution from the 1820s of doctors who became the pioneers of the specialty discipline of the Prison Medical Service in Australia. The experiences and influences of surgeon-superintendents on convict transportation vessels formed the catalyst for the Passenger Act (UK) of 1855 which, for the remaining decades of the 19th century, regulated the lives of millions of immigrants to Australia and New Zealand.

Australia↗
PubMed1996

The life of Henry Jeanneret (1802-1886). Pioneer Australian dentist. With an account of his colonial service and scientific contributions in Australia.

Henry Jeanneret was a pioneer Australian dentist, perhaps the first in this country to promote the discipline of dentistry as distinct from medicine and general surgery. This profile describes his early life and training, his emigration to Australia, his clinical practice in Sydney and in Van Diemen's Land, and his contributions to natural history, particularly in the field of botany.

Australia↗
PubMed1995

Publication: an ethical imperative.

Publication of medical research is both a monitor of the researcher's ethics and an audit of the local or regional ethics committee that approved it. Selectivity of publication or of the intention to publish lessens this audit. Opinions differ about what is ethically allowable in clinical and benchtop medical research. Ethical permission and ethical monitoring of medical research are subject to a hierarchy of pyramidal controls, starting in hospital and ending with the local, institutional, or regional ethics committee. Currently, such committees function with widely varying degrees of efficiency and quality of output, and with differing viewpoints on many ethical issues. Without an a priori insistence by institutional ethics committees that there be an intention to publish all medical research involving human subjects, ethics committees cannot routinely be subject to the scrutiny or audit which they themselves demand of researchers.

Biomedical Research↗
PubMed1995

Radiology in Rwanda.

This account documents some aspects of military radiology in the aftermath of the Rwandan Civil War of 1994. Following the genocidal conflict of April-July 1994, all radiographic services ceased in Rwanda, a nation of some 7,500,000 people. As part of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force, UNAMIR II, the Australian Medical Support Force established and provided, on an ongoing basis, sophisticated medical, surgical and intensivist care for the sick and wounded United Nations personnel, of whom there were up to 7000 deployed in Rwanda; and, as part of its humanitarian outreach, emergency medical and surgical care for Rwandese civilians. The Australian contingent of 308 service personnel established the Australian Military Hospital (the 'United Nations Hospital') in the former Clinic Wing of the Kigali Central Hospital. From August 1994 the Radiology Department of the Australian Medical Support Force provided the first specialist X-ray services as part of the re-building of the stricken nation and, over the ensuing year, provided a diagnostic service for soldiers and civilians with both chronic and recent war wounds, trauma victims in the aftermath of the Civil War, sick and injured soldiers and Rwandese suffering from any of the full range of medical conditions encountered in tropical Africa.

Australia↗
PubMed1994

Barriers to safety.

Explore the source record for details and available documents.

Accident Prevention↗
PubMed1994

Emigrant etherist: the medical and scientific influence of John Henry Hill Lewellin (1818-86), pioneer anaesthetist and surgeon and patron of botany in Australia.

The pioneer anaesthetists in Australia came from varying professional backgrounds. To the influence of Belisario in Sydney. Pugh in Launceston and Buchanan in Stroud, can be added the role of John Henry Hill Lewellin (1818-86). Lewellin immigrated from Scotland to become a pioneer Melbourne etherist and surgeon from 1852. Born in India, he studied surgery at Bart's Hospital in London (1842) and as a Member of the Royal College of Surgeons from that year, practised as a surgeon and dentist in Glasgow. On 19 December 1746 he was the first to use the newly discovered ether in anesthetic practice in Glasgow, and one of the first to do so in the United Kingdom. He emigrated to Melbourne in 1852, where he achieved considerable success in the management of tetanus with ether. He was an active member of the Medical Society of Victoria and a vigorous participant in its clinical discussions. As a surgeon, Lewellin pursued a significant community role in the broader Melbourne society of the day. He served as a Magistrate, became Vaccination Officer in Victoria and, as an active doctor-soldier, served with sequential promotions finally to the rank of Surgeon-Major in the Volunteer Force (Rifles) of the Colony. He became a patron of science and a supporter of the Melbourne botanist, Ferdinand von Mueller. Of all his prodigious scientific writing, von Mueller dedicated Volume 8 of his Fragmenta to his surgical colleague, as one 'who is a most skillful physician' and later as 'a most generous promoter of my investigations'. Lewellin's legacy, in his pioneering contributions as an early anaesthetist in two continents, lives on in the scientific names of two floral species which perpetuate his name.

Anesthesiology↗