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

Choose your own Adventure: adapting to challenges in Critical Care

One of the key aspects of practicing critical care medicine in both the pre-hospital, and in-hospital setting is the unpredictable nature of events. Critical care clinicians will seldom know in advance what their day will entail, so how do we prepare to adapt to ever increasing challenges, whilst still delivering best patient care. In this interactive session, the panel and the audience will discuss a patient journey from the pre-hospital to the in-hospital setting. Along this patient journey, the presenters will discuss how to apply leadership, communication and decision making skills to clinical settings, and will aim to give you skills to better prepare for the unexpected. Presenters in this session will share their tools to communicate, make rapid decisions, and what makes a good clinical leader.

Presented by:

• Tash Adams, Senior Critical Care Paramedic, Queensland Ambulance Service

• Sam Burton, MICA Paramedic, Ambulance Victoria

• Libby Hanrahan, Critical Care Helicopter Paramedic, NSW Ambulance

• Dr Sanj Fernando, Senior Emergency Physician, NSW State Retrieval Consultant, Co-Director DevelopingEM LTD and Principal Fernando Consulting

• Dr Cliff Connell, Senior Lecturer and Deputy Director, Graduate Research Monash Nursing and Midwifery. Research Fellow, Monash Health Emergency. Fellow of College of Emergency Nursing Australasia (FCENA)

Facilitated by:

Biographies

Tash Adams - Natasha Adams is a Senior Critical Care Paramedic with the Queensland Ambulance Service, working with the Brisbane High Acuity Response Unit. Her clinical interests include progressive trauma and medical care, clinical education and leadership development.

Sam Burton - Sam Burton is an intensive care paramedic from regional Victoria with over a decade of in-hospital and prehospital experience. This perspective has led to Sam identifying ways to better improve patient care in a range of clinical applications. Sam has a strong focus on point of care ultrasound (POCUS) and has recently published research in this field. Sam has an ongoing commitment to the dissemination and sharing of knowledge from both his clinical and research practice. Sam has been involved in the development and delivery of numerous training programs to paramedics throughout Victoria and will bring a broad perspective to the stage.

Libby Hanrahan - Libby has worked in the prehospital world for NSW Ambulance for over 20 years. The last 10 years have been in the role of Critical Care Helicopter Paramedic. Even after 10 years she finds the role to be ever evolving with new learnings, challenges and of course amazing comradery with the crew she works alongside. She feels privileged to work alongside the most incredible Paramedics, pilots, air crewmen and doctors. ‘Everyone has worked their off to be in rescue and retrieval medicine – so when the work is on we are at our most fulfilled. I justifies all the hours of training.’

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.

Dr Cliff Connell - With more than 30 years nursing experience, Dr Cliff Connell has spent the last 24 years as an emergency Nurse, emergency Clinical Nurse Educator, Clinical Nurse Consultant university lecturer and researcher. A Fellow of the College of Emergency Nursing Australasia, he is the Deputy Director of Graduate Research and Senior Lecturer in Emergency Nursing at Monash Nursing and Midwifery (MNM), a Monash Health Emergency research fellow and a Monash University, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences Research Fellow. Cliff’s work is translational research which aims to improve the safety and quality of care provision and outcomes for emergency department (ED) patients. In his program of research, he leads several projects related to current physiological assessment practice in the ED, its association with patient and system outcomes and improving these outcomes using computational support for clinical decision support systems. Cliff is a member of the First2Act research development team, a core project researcher of the Team Emergency Assessment Measure (TEAMTM) and producer and presenter of the This Emergency Life Podcast