Regional doctors have reported being sidelined or restricted when offering help at their local bushfire evacuation centres, and are calling for GPs to be formally added to future emergency response plans.

Key points: A Nowra GP says operational barriers hampered her efforts to help

A Nowra GP says operational barriers hampered her efforts to help She is seeking a meeting with leaders to co-ordinate future responses

She is seeking a meeting with leaders to co-ordinate future responses A medical body suggests creating a register for regional doctors before emergencies happen

As fires burned across New South Wales and Victoria, private GPs in affected areas went to centres where many of their patients had fled.

Yet some say operational barriers and command structures hampered their efforts, and in one case a GP was told she couldn't work with the official team to treat people.

Kate Manderson is a GP in Nowra and rallied her staff last weekend as NSW braced for extreme conditions.

She raided her four practices and set up a temporary site at a local evacuation centre, bringing nine oxygen cylinders, two cardiac monitors, three defibrillators, and emergency medications.

Dr Manderson brought all the supplies from her own practice. ( Supplied )

Dr Manderson said the local authorities were grateful she was there, but she soon hit hurdles.

"I notified the EOC (emergency operation centre) that I was there and willing to help … and the EOC team called me back and said, 'Well, no. You're not part of our protocols and you're not part of our team, so we can't use you'," she said.

"It's not because they didn't know me, didn't think I could do a good job … but their protocols, their policies, their governance structures don't allow someone who is not part of their system to work with their system.

"And that's what we're calling to change, to make this part of the system so that these barriers aren't put in place."

Some of the supplies Dr Manderson brought to her makeshift clinic. ( Supplied )

Dr Manderson said her team treated about 20 people, including those with respiratory issues and an RFS firefighter who had sustained a cut.

She said she had heard similar stories from colleagues in Mallacoota and Merimbula in the past week, and would seek a meeting with people in leadership positions to have GPs embedded in future emergency evacuation plans.

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"The doctors down at Mallacoota, there's a bunch of GPs who have stepped up to the plate and got stuff done just because they were there and wanted to step up, not because there was a process in place to allow that to happen," she said.

"The local health district and the ambulance services were just not really interested in helping us out."

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A doctor in Merimbula — who has chosen to remain anonymous — also expressed frustration at the co-ordination of local help.

She said she went to an evacuation centre but was told she could only give basic first aid, and an ambulance had to be called for anything else.

She said ambulances took an hour to arrive and the St John's Ambulance team that had been helping was evacuated from her area.

"I don't understand why there would not be better co-ordination of care," she said.

"If not for the dedication of our lovely group of local GPs … these people were abandoned with not even any access to basic first aid."

'We don't want chaos'

This week Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt announced that, for the first time, Australian Medical Assistance Team (AUSMAT) specialists were being deployed in a domestic setting to provide support.

The eight specialists — two doctors, two nurses, two paramedics and two logisticians — were deployed to the RAAF base in Sale in East Gippsland to provide clinical and logistical assistance to evacuees.

A family awaiting a community meeting in Narooma on the NSW far south coast. ( ABC News: Jonathan Hair )

Meanwhile, Victoria's Rural Workforce Agency — a peak body for medical professionals — has put out the call for locum doctors to head to regional areas to provide support in the coming weeks and months.

Agency CEO Trevor Carr said he understood the concerns of local doctors wanting to help when emergencies happened, but it had to be done in a co-ordinated way.

"We need to have a command structure, because otherwise things just turn to chaos," he said.

"I think one of the challenges is when the emergency is actually in play, the emergency command structures don't necessarily take into account private individuals. And of course a lot of general practitioners are in private business.

Bushfires have torn through the town of Batlow in south-eastern New South Wales. ( Facebook: James R Zimmerman )

He said one idea being considered was creating a register of approved local doctors who could help in future bushfires.

"If at least there's a preregister of practitioners and clinical nurses with appropriate skills, then as soon as they present their credentials they know that they're credentialed to go in the zone," he said.

"That would be a different scenario than just trying to assist in the flurry of the emergency."