This podcast is designed to have engaging and inspirational conversations with some of the worlds leading experts in or relating to pre-hospital care. We hope you take a lot from the conversations both from a technical and non-technical perspective. Please rate and review the show as feedback helps ensure that the best information gets back to you throughout the project.
Decision-making is one of the defining skills of pre-hospital practice. Every shift requires clinicians to interpret incomplete information, navigate uncertainty, balance competing risks, and make consequential decisions, often under intense time pressure. But does faster decision-making necessarily lead to better decisions? In this compilation episode of the Pre-Hospital Care Podcast, we explore…
In this episode, I’m joined by Neil Jeffers to explore Crew Resource Management (CRM) and why it remains one of the most important safety tools in aviation, healthcare, and pre-hospital care. We begin by tracing the origins of CRM, examining how a series of aviation accidents shifted the focus from technical proficiency alone to the human factors that influence decision-making, communication,…
Today, we’re joined by Diane Dollar, a pilot whose career sits at the intersection of frontline HEMS operations, training, and the future of the aviation workforce. Diane is a professional helicopter pilot and check airman for a major air medical operator, with a background that spans tours, VIP charter, organ transport, and helicopter air ambulance missions. Alongside this, she continues to fly…
Fatigue is one of the most significant yet under-recognised threats to safety in pre-hospital care. Every day, ambulance clinicians make complex clinical decisions, drive emergency vehicles, and care for critically ill patients while working long shifts, overnight hours, and often with inadequate recovery. Despite decades of evidence demonstrating the impact of fatigue on cognitive performance,…
Cardiac arrest remains one of the most scrutinised and resource-intensive presentations in prehospital care. We invest heavily in improving what happens in the moment, compression quality, airway strategies, defibrillation timing, and team coordination. Yet one of the most powerful determinants of system performance often sits outside the resuscitation itself: what we do with the data afterwards.…
In this episode of the Pre-Hospital Care Podcast, we're joined by Dr Jo Mildenhall to explore a critical and often under-discussed issue in pre-hospital medicine: burnout. Frontline ambulance staff experience some of the highest rates of sickness absence in the NHS, with stress, anxiety, and depression frequently cited as the cause. While much attention has traditionally focused on the impact of…
On the Pre-Hospital Care Podcast, we spend a lot of time discussing clinical decision-making, operational challenges, and the science that underpins emergency medicine. But now and again, it's important to step back and remember why we do what we do. Behind every dispatch is a person. Behind every set of observations is a family. And behind every successful mission is a story that often continues…
The illicit drug market is evolving faster than ever before. Novel psychoactive substances (NPS), synthetic opioids and increasingly potent club drugs are creating new challenges for pre-hospital clinicians, emergency departments and critical care teams. Patients are presenting with unfamiliar toxidromes, unpredictable physiology, and rapidly deteriorating clinical conditions that demand…
Pain is one of the most immediate and universal experiences of trauma, yet in emergency and pre-hospital care, it remains surprisingly under-treated. Despite decades of awareness, oligoanalgesia, the inadequate treatment of acute pain, continues to affect patients in the very moments when compassionate, effective care matters most. Too often, the focus in emergency systems has been on processes:…
In this episode, we welcome Dr Abigail Pamich, an experienced Clinical Psychologist with more than 20 years of experience working in mental health and psychological therapy. Dr Abigail leads a private psychology practice in the UK, overseeing a team of 12 highly skilled therapists who provide evidence-based therapy remotely to clients across the UK and internationally. Together, we explore Eye…
On today’s episode, we’re diving into a case study that captures the reality of modern prehospital care at its most demanding: a high-speed road traffic collision resulting in major trauma, an evolving shock presentation, and tension between competing priorities in the field. This case comes from Dr Michael DeFilippo, an Emergency Medicine and EMS physician, and it challenges us to think beyond…