That age old arguement (not the QR one, the para V doc)
I tend to see it in a different light (as usual). It is all about resources, resources, and resources.
Lets take one-are's excellent point: the bushwalker. On the face of he is 100% right, why send the doc when a para will do? There is no refuting this arguement, but it makes too specific a "what if". The helicopter is a far more expensive asset to buy and maintain than a road ambulance, yet it fulfils that role. So why then would we waste all that resource on another ambulance? We dont. The EMS helicopter has two primary attributes to justify its higher resource requirement: access ability and speed.
The access ability is exactly where one-are is coming from, and that example is a good one, but it is only half the arguement, and one-are argues it well.
Speed of the helicopter is used on many levels. It is widely acknowledged that time can be of critical importance in a limited number of cases, but these cases cannot always be determined until specialist evaluation. If we wished to achieve speed of specialist care, we need to get a specialist doctor or specialist access rescue personnel to the situation ASAP.
To take this to extremes, if we had unlimited resources (and training facilities) we could have trippled the number of intensive care wards, have each of the tenfold increase in road ambulances manned with a mobile trauma capability and docs with RobboRiders experience, entrapment rescue specialists at every intersection and blackspot, etc, etc, etc. But obviously, we have limited resources, so how can we increase response speed to the best possible configuration, with the least amount of resource expenditure? We concentrate groups of the specialists in a population/distance matrix and supply them with the fastest response means: a helicopter. AN EMS helicopter.
This is the same way we do with the limited resource of the paramedic on road ambulances. The ideal would be to train all ambulance officers to paramedic standard, and then Special Casualty Access Team standard, but actual resources have forced a limited amount of these people and thus a strategic placement of them around the state.
Now back to the helicopter. It is merely a means of getting a higher trained medical resource to a scene faster AND it can fulfil it's other role of getting to areas ground ambulances cannot. Because we have been forced by resource issues to concentrate the specialists on these helicopters, there are occaisions when it is overkill to send them, such as the example that one-are paints. That is the price of limited resource.
The other NSW helicopters that are mentioned as non doctor operations are non doctor as a result of resource issues, not as a result of preferences. But in this resource limited world, I would suggest that NSW will have a hard time puting doctors in all the helicopters. In the mean time, part-time helicopter paramedics will continue to serve the people of NSW in the highly professional and selfless way that they have done for 30 years without the resources that they could so easily use.