Top trauma doctor joins CareFlight board
Australian aeromedical charity CareFlight Ltd has appointed Dr Nicholas Coatsworth to its board of directors.
Image: CareFlight directors Dr Andrew Refshauge (left) and Dr Nick Coatsworth (CareFlight Ltd)
Australian aeromedical charity CareFlight Ltd has appointed Dr Nicholas Coatsworth to its board of directors. Coatsworth is a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians and specialises in both respiratory medicine and infectious diseases. He holds the position of acting executive director at the National Critical Care and Trauma Response Centre in based Darwin.
CareFlight said that with Coatsworth’s appointment, it now has three resident directors in the Northern Territory including Ian Badham and Patricia Angus. The organisation’s board chairman Dr Andrew Refshauge commented: “We are delighted that Nick has joined the CareFlight board. Nick is deeply committed to humanitarian causes and as a doctor with Médecins Sans Frontières, he has worked in Congo-Brazzaville, Chad and Sudan in the Darfur region. In the Northern Territory, where CareFlight operates the Top End Medical Retrieval Service on behalf of the NT Government, Nick is very involved with indigenous health, regularly visiting remote indigenous communities. He has also led a combined team of health professionals to the Arnhem Land community of Maningrida to eradicate endemic trachoma.”
Coatsworth’s appointment follows the resignation of the head of trauma at The Children’s Hospital at Westmead, Professor Danny Cass. Refshauge said: “Danny has been a long-standing advocate for CareFlight’s rapid response model of trauma care. As a paediatric surgeon, Danny saw first-hand the benefits of getting paediatric trauma patients directly from accident scenes to specialist children’s hospitals, and he actively promoted these benefits within the health system. We thank Danny for his support of CareFlight and his service to CareFlight during his time on the board.”
The current CareFlight board of directors comprises Andrew Refshauge (chairman), Derek Colenbrander (CEO), Patricia Angus, Ian Badham, David Bowen, Nicholas Coatsworth, Garry Dinnie and Anna Guillan.