East Anglian Air Ambulance holds PHEM conference

East Anglian Air Ambulance (EAAA) held its first dedicated pre-hospital emergency medicine (PHEM) conference on Friday 19 November.

The hybrid event, themed ‘Breaking Barriers: national data sets improving collaboration and outcomes in PHEM’, was held by the charity’s in-house clinical research group RAID, with sponsorship from medical technology technology firm Zoll.

The conference also featured six hours of continuing professional development content supported by the Faculty of Pre-Hospital Care, Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh.

The event was broadcast live from EAAA’s headquarters in Norwich, UK, with over 450 people signing up to attend on the day, and over 200 delegates joining live on the day.

“EAAA are hugely thankful for the engagement of all our partners and stakeholder in making this happen and we look forward to seeing everyone again next year,” said Dr Rob Major, Chair of RAID.

The conference had several key discussion topics:

• Wider data collaboration within all the air ambulances in the East of England has demonstrated methods of improving patient care in relation to pre-hospital emergency anaesthetics
• National TARN data shows that the elderly is an increasing large patient group in national trauma registries and pre-hospital work, often suffering severe injury with less traumatic mechanisms of injury
• Discussions around centralised national registries of pre-hospital patient data would be hugely beneficial in developing quality data for audit and research, such as the proposed PHEMNet trauma data registry.

According to EAAA, the conference ‘focused on how collaborative working and data sharing across the sector could improve research and development opportunities and patient outcomes.’

Key speakers and breakout sessions

Key speakers included an introduction by EAAA’s Dr Rob Major and Dr Kate Lachowycz, as well as talks by guest speakers including Professor Tim Coats of the Leicester Royal Infirmary; Dr Nicholas Crombie of QE Hospital Birmingham; Dr Phil Hyde of Southampton Children’s Hospital; Dr James Price of EAAA and Magpas; Dr Nikki Wallace-King, also of EAAA; and Gordon Ingram of Zoll UK.

The conference also featured breakout sessions on: Ultrasound use and governance in PHEM; a submitted abstract/poster presentation competition; and pre-hospital patient care.