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

Keynote Discussion - Ethical Critical Care

Critical care medicine and ethical conundrums will often go hand in hand. The early phases of the COVID pandemic saw many debates around access to ICU beds and advanced resuscitation for large cohorts of the community. In this session, panel members will discuss some ethical questions which are often seen in the critical care community. End of life decisions, equality of access to treatment, and competing interests between KPIs and delivering best patient care are only some of the topics this panel will discuss.

Presented by:

• Assoc Prof David Anderson, Medical Director, Ambulance Victoria

• Assoc Prof/Dr Gayle Christie, Medical Director, St John Ambulance WA and Emergency Medicine Consultant, Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital

• Dr Jason Bendall, Director Medical Services, NSW Ambulance and Associate Professor, University of Newcastle

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

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

Biographies

Assoc Prof David Anderson - David is the Medical Director of Ambulance Victoria, an intensivist at The Alfred Hospital and an adjunct senior lecturer in the Department of Paramedicine at Monash University. He has trained and worked as a paramedic in Auckland and as a doctor in Auckland, Sydney and Toronto before settling in Melbourne. In addition to his intensive care fellowship he has spent time training in anaesthesia, prehospital and retrieval medicine and palliative medicine. He has a diploma in palliative medicine and is completing a masters in bioethics. His clinical interests are prehospital and retrieval medicine, trauma, EMCO and bioethics. He has an embarrassingly large collection of Lego.

Assoc Prof/Dr Gayle Christie - UK trained Consultant with dual accreditation in Emergency and Pre-hospital Medicine with over 15 years experience working with HEMS, rapid road response, motorsport and secondary aeromedical retrieval services. Dr Gayle Christie began working with SJAWA in 2021 as the Deputy Medical Director and Clinical Lead for the Critical Care Paramedics and in September 2022 took up the role as Medical Director for the ambulance service. Gayle has a real passion for education and training as well as developing and expanding the scope of paramedic practice

Dr Jason Bendall - Dr Jason Bendall is a specialist anaesthetist, specialist paramedic and specialist prehospital & retrieval medicine physician. Jason works clinically as an anaesthetist at one of Australia’s busiest trauma hospitals with subspecialty interest in orthopaedic trauma. Jason is NSW Ambulances Director of Medical Service and is an adjunct associate professor at the University of Newcastle Department of Rural Health

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.