Critical Care Summit 2023

A brand-new event on the College's conference calendar, Critical Care Summit 2023 was hosted in Tweed Heads in May 2023. The Summit aimed at providing a targeted education and engagement for critical care practitioners including paramedics, nurses and emergency and retrieval physicians.

Through two days of case-based learning, attendees experienced multi-faceted and interactive presentations centred around complex patient care.

Summit theme: Contemporary care through collaboration

Dr Sanj Fernando - Opening Keynote Presentation

Keynote speaker, Dr Sanj Fernando, set the tone for the event, his presentation on day one focused on his collaboration with the Suwasiriya (the Sri Lankan ambulance service), to build a pre-hospital service from the ground up Sanj discussed the success of this global project that now services a country with a population of 21 million, and compared this to other initiatives.

Biography: Dr Sanj Fernando

Sanj Fernando is an Emergency Physician working at Liverpool in Sydney. He has worked in aeromedical retrieval and pre-hospital care for over 20yrs. He is currently a NSW state retrieval consultant. He is also one of the two Co- Directors of Developing EM which is a not for profit organization that seeks to support acute care and critical care services across the globe. In 2016 he commenced a collaboration with the Suwasiriya (the Sri Lankan ambulance service) to build a service from the ground up. It now services the whole country with a population of 21 million people. He has worked to further acute medical training in Cambodia, Myanmar, PNG, The Solomon islands, Fiji, Cuba, Brazil Nepal and elsewhere. He is currently setting up a global EMS group to share training, experiences, case discussions and protocols amongst developing EMS systems around the world.

Moderated by: Dr Ben Meadley, Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Monash and Operational Improvement Lead (MICA) & senior Intensive Care Flight Paramedic (MICA), Ambulance Victoria