Well it’s been a minute since our last episode, but we are delighted to be back with a very special episode in a format that we haven’t tried before. A few weeks ago, This Emergency Life packed up our recording equipment and headed up to the Australasian College of Paramedicine (ACP) inaugural 2023 Critical Care Summit on the Gold Coast to record a live episode of the podcast.

The ACP is the peak professional body representing and supporting paramedics and student paramedics across Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand since 1973. The ACP 2023 Critical Care Summit was the first time this novel and inspiring meeting has taken place and boy have they set a high bar. The summit is the brainchild of Intensive Care Paramedic and Senior Lecturer at Monash University Department of Paramedicine, Tim Andrews and senior Intensive Care Flight Paramedic (MICA) with Ambulance Victoria and Adjunct Senior Lecturer Dr Ben Meadley. Tim and Ben brought together a broad program of interdisciplinary speakers and teams for two days of targeted education and engagement with the central theme Contemporary care through collaboration.

TEL were invited to record a live-on-stage episode of the podcast with free range to pick the episode’s guests for a chat about… well whatever we wanted! As you can imagine it was no easy task narrowing down our guest list to three people from the overwhelming expertise and experience represented by the delegates and speakers at the summit.

During the live podcast we spoke with flight paramedic and PhD candidate Hanna Latta, Director Australasian College of Paramedicine and Senior Paramedic Specialist, Marty Nichols and Ben Meadley. These are three people who have a lot to say about the past, present and future of emergency care in Australasia.  During the hour we spoke to Hanna, Ben and Marty about everything from the nexus between pre-hospital care and the ED, the evolving roles of paramedics and primary health care, advanced and specialist practice in pre-hospital care and the emergency care community’s roles and responsibilities in society.

Our sincerest thanks the Australasian College of Paramedicine, Tim and Ben and everybody at the summit for the invitation and making us feel so welcome. We hope you enjoy hearing from Hanna, Ben and Marty as much as we enjoyed talking to them live on stage.