Dr Sarah Dalton is the President of the Paediatrics and Child Health division of the Royal Australian College of Physicians. She is also one of the organizing committee of the upcoming OnTheWards18 conference.

When not attending conferences she works at The Children’s Hospital at Westmead as a Paediatric Emergency Physician.

In this talk she takes us through a case that has stayed with her and how things might be different in the future.

Bec Nogajski is a Director of Training as well as a Paediatric Emergency Physician. In this talk she brings her experience of supervising many trainees (including Tessa Davis) to the audience. It is not about giving negative or positive feedback but about giving developmental feedback. It’s about creating a safe and supportive culture and it’s about being a positive role model at all times.

Providing meaningful feedback can be a real challenge, especially if you are the sort of person that likes to avoid conflict. So what do you do if you’ve been asked to do something tough? Bec talks about about the Case of the Malodorous Medic – the trainee with body odour issues.

Things have moved on from the days of Brutaine – holding a child down whilst trying to whip a piece of crumbling blue crayon from their snotty nostril. Now, we have a cornucopia of pharmacological agents to assist us – from ketamine and midazolam to chloral and propofol.

But who should we use them with?

Or, perhaps more importantly, who should we avoid them with? What precautions do we need to take to make sure that everything is just plain sailing?

Listen to Deb Shellshear tell you how to make life just that little bit easier.

Michael is one of the founders and the chief executive of Patient Opinion Australia, a not-for-profit charitable organisation that aims to use the patient voice to drive change. Patients send their stories to POA who then feed them back to healthcare organisations.

Listen to Michael speak of this vital service and how it can make a difference to patients and providers alike.

When you start out in any branch of medicine there are so many unknown unknowns that it makes sense to follow the well trodden path of those that have gone before you. It makes sense to use checklists and flowcharts to make sure you are not missing something. It makes sense to look at resources like DFTB. But then what? Not all patients fit into neat little boxes, presenting with classical signs and symptoms. Then what do you do? Paediatrician, Robyn Brady, explores how we can learn to think beyond the algorithm.

Damian is a consultant and honorary associate professor in Paediatric Emergency Medicine. He is a research powerhouse as you can tell if you look at the list of his recent publications. He is also the chair of PERUKI – the Paediatric Emergency Research in the UK and Ireland – and contributes heavily to our monthly round up of interesting literature.

In this talk he asks to be wary of the conclusions we draw from just reading the abstracts. He reminds us, as have all of our great speakers, that we are here, ultimately, to make a difference for our patients.

So, sit back and listen.

Rachel Callander is an award winning photographer and mother who has turned her talent towards advocating for children with ‘Super Powers’. She has documented her journey in a beautiful book, the Super Power Baby Project.

Her raw words remind us that every word we say has an impact far beyond what we are taught. The wrong words can harm our therapeutic relationships but the right ones…. the right ones can be AWESOME.