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Flying doctors have always been intrinsic to the history of the medical profession in Australia, addressing the unique problems that face those that live in rural and remote parts of the country. With a waiting room of over 7.7 million square kilometres as per the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) website, these medical professionals have tremendous occupational challenges in attending to patients.

Covering a range of health related areas, including medical, dental and mental health, these professionals need to be as mobile as possible to travel around the remote parts of Australia. Finding an occupational solution that saves medical professionals time in non-essential tasks, like lengthy note-taking and paperwork, is therefore vital to keeping up the good work of the RFDS and doctors all over the country. This is where Dragon Medical One can help.

Not just doctors, not just medical

Although the RFDS is most famous for its 24 hour emergency assistance, the service also fulfills a range of other valuable functions. As well as immediate medical response, the RFDS employs a transfer service, moving the sick and wounded from rural areas to larger hospitals with appropriate facilities. In emergencies, speedy transfer is essential, so any time wasted taking cumbersome and time-consuming handwritten patient notes should be avoided.

They also run an advice helpline, with hardworking doctors and nurses dispensing information to the afflicted over the phone. This is enabled with access to medicine and first aid equipment available in 3,500 medical chests stationed in isolated locations nationwide, according to the Federal government's RFDS service webpage. This helpline runs 24 hours a day too, so medical professionals always need to be on their toes waiting for a call. Time spent on notation, administration or written research takes away from this potentially life-saving service.

There are a variety of non-medical professionals on staff, including psychologists, dentists and a range of specialist medical professionals. In order to work to their full potential, workers need to do away with time-wasting hand typed administration or handwritten notes on-the-go.

Dragon Medical's dictation solution

The RFDS states that over 280,000 patients used their services last year. This is a vast number of people, but pales in comparison to national averages for other healthcare facilities – so saving medical professionals time in their practice will be invaluable to them seeing even more unwell people. Dragon Medical's dictation solution offers doctors, nurses and other medical professionals a range of innovative benefits that will improve their day-to-day:

• Dictation software has a databank of preset medical terms, meaning your word choices are more easily matched and spelt correctly every time. Additionally, this word bank gets updated regularly with your most used terms, meaning that your Dragon Medical software will come to truly reflect your speech.
• The software becomes intuitive to the sound of your voice, meaning it can transcribe any stutters or mumbles, using unique audio capture technology to match the best word to the sound you produce. It is also sensitive to speech fillers and other non-verbal noises, meaning you don't need to go back and edit your notes when you are done.
• Dragon Medical is offered in a range of over 60 medical specialties and subspecialties, meaning you will spend less time on updating your medical records and spend more time with patients.
• Dragon Medical comes with a choice of microphones, depending on your application, and extensive on-site or remote training, to ensure you can get the best out of your equipment.
• It also comes with 12 months of help desk support, to ensure you don't run into any problems.

Take off with Dragon Medical

The RFDS are recognised internationally for the fantastic and uniquely challenging work they do in Australia – but their problem of time-consuming notation eating into patient consultations is one common to all doctors. Slashing the time your medical practice spends on handwritten or typed notes is therefore a must. Dragon Medical's intuitive dictation software is designed to make doctors' more efficient – so contact our customer service team for more information, and get your medical practice off to a flyer!