G'Day and welcome back to the HEMS debrief, cardiac arrest mini-series. This is part two of our conversation with the pre-hospital ECMO team from Paris, France. 

Following part one, in this part two we continue to chat with Alice and Lionel about their extended research in the out-of-hospital cardiac arrest space, including but not limited to rapid cooling and ventilation strategies.

Too, we discuss the cultural reluctance of systems to further adopt pre-hospital ECMO, as well as share some tips for those systems considering embarking on ECMO provision. 

As 2025 draws to a close, thank you sincerely for listening throughout 2025, and we cannot wait to talk again in 2026. 

We are delighted to be sponsored by Corpuls - delivering high-tech and innovative equipment for emergency and intensive care medicine for over 35 years.

G'day and welcome back to the Sydney HEMS Debrief podcast - this is our focused mini-series on Cardiac Arrest. 

Today's episode is a big one. We have the absolute privilege of speaking to the Dr Alice Hutin and Prof Lionel Lamhaut from the pre-hospital ECMO team in Paris, France. 

The team, part of the Service d’Aide Medical d’Urgence (aka SAMU) in Paris, have been performing pre-hospital ECMO for OOHCA since 2011. For the past 10 years, the team have been available 24/7, working in concert with the pre-hospital ICU team dispatched to cardiac arrests in the greater Paris region. 

Truly ground-breaking, Alice and Lionel join us to reflect on over a decade of pre-hospital ECPR care, system implementation and challenges. Too, and perhaps most significantly, Alice and Lionel reflect on the extent to which the pre-hospital ECPR service has influenced every step of the chain of survival in the Paris system - promoting high quality basic and advanced life support at multiple levels within the pre-hospital response. 

Too, Sam does not shy away from asking some tough questions around just who should be performing ECPR - high specialised, limited access services or should this therapy be adopted and delivered more widely. 

This is part one of a two part episode, and is an absolute cracker. 

Be sure to tune in to part two very soon!

We are delighted to be sponsored by Corpuls - delivering high-tech and innovative equipment for emergency and intensive care medicine for over 35 years.

G'day and welcome back to the Sydney HEMS debrief, with our focus still firmly on cardiac arrest. 

In this episode 14, Nat is joined by Dr Helen Oliver in conversation with Dr Caroline Leech from the UK. Caroline is an emergency and pre-hospital physician who's academic interest focuses on maternal cardiac arrest. Specifically, Caroline's work concerns resuscitative hysterotomy; the when, the how, and the what to do after performing this HALO procedure. 

We hope you enjoy this challenging episode, and of course share widely with your network. 

Chat soon.

We are delighted to be sponsored by Corpuls - delivering high-tech and innovative equipment for emergency and intensive care medicine for over 35 years.

Welcome back, this is part two of Nat's chat with Dr PO Berve from Norway. 

Continuing the conversation, Nat and PO discuss physiological markers of ALS effectiveness as well as broach how to most judiciously use adrenaline during cardiac arrest. Too, PO dives into how to use the end tidal capnogram as a marker of CPR effectiveness - and it is not how you may think!

Of course, this would not be a Sydney HEMS debrief episode without talking about eCPR and ventilation during CPR - the later being a favourite topic of Nat's for sure.

As ever, thanks for listening and chat again soon. 

We are delighted to be sponsored by Corpuls - delivering high-tech and innovative equipment for emergency and intensive care medicine for over 35 years.

As we move our the podcast onto both Spotify and Apple Podcasts, we are re-posting this episode originally published in March 2024. 

In this episode, Nat and Alex join Sam to discuss the Sydney PRECARE pre-hospital ECMO trial as it is just getting under way. Focusing on workflows and team integration, Nat and Alex share their experiences, challenges and successes in these early days for the trial. 

We hope that the content here may help frame that of other episodes in this cardiac arrest series, as well as flavour future episodes as we reflect on PRECARE several years later. 

Hello, and welcome back to the Sydney HEMS debrief podcast. This is our focused series on cardiac arrest. 

Have you ever wondered what happens during one chest compression? In this episode, Nat deep-dives with PO into the physiology of the arrested patient – specifically what happens, or what should happen, during one perfect chest compression. It’s a fascinating conversation not to be missed by anyone with an interest in performing high quality resuscitation tailored to a specific patient. 

Part two coming soon!

We are delighted to be sponsored by Corpuls - delivering high-tech and innovative equipment for emergency and intensive care medicine for over 35 years.

Welcome back to the Sydney HEMS debrief. We are up to episode 11!

Today, we are pivoting towards toxicology. Specifically, we discuss some of the more common toxidromes encountered pre-hospitally, how they cause cardiac arrest, and what providers – in particular pre-hospital providers – may do in order to best resuscitate these patients.

In addition to some broader and very applicable learning themes pertinent to any toxidrome, we discuss

Of course we are not doing discussing this alone. We are so luck to be joined today by a clinical toxicologist, Dr Úna.

Dr Úna Nic Ionmhain graduated from Trinity College Dublin, and subsequently trained in Emergency Medicine in Perth. She completed a Pre Hospital and Retrieval Medicine year with CareFlight NSW as well as a poisons fellowship. She is now a staff specialist FACEM at Liverpool Hospital NSW, and a clinical toxicologist with the NSW Poisons Information Centre. She has an academic interest in HIET in toxicology for cardiogenic shock, which was the focus of her masters thesis, and is a passionate educator with a particular interest in cardiotoxicity.

We sure hope you enjoy this episode, and until next time, we hope you have a great week.

We are delighted to be sponsored by Corpuls - delivering high-tech and innovative equipment for emergency and intensive care medicine for over 35 years.

This is part two of our conversation with Dr Mike Lauria.

Join us as Nat and Mike continue to delve into team performance. In this episode, Nat and Mike discuss human factors gold including but not limited to how to accept imperfection and continue to deliver optimal team performance when things are going south, how to instil calm in a team whilst maintaining the momentum of care, and how to adapt and pivot whilst maintaining optimal process.

Of course, there is much much more and so we hope you enjoy this episode, and share it far and wide.

Speak soon.

We are delighted to be sponsored by Corpuls - delivering high-tech and innovative equipment for emergency and intensive care medicine for over 35 years.

Hello, and welcome back to the Sydney HEMS debrief podcast.

Thank you for your patience – I have been taking the long way home from Canada, but am delighted to be back in Sydney and now ready to go with more episodes of our focused series on cardiac arrest.

In this part one of two episodes, we are pivoting away from the technical towards human factors and team performance. In doing this, we are thrilled to be joined by Dr Mike Lauria.

Mike is a human factors legend. Prior to becoming a Doctor, Mike served as an elite Pararescueman in the 321st Special Tactics Squadron during which time he won numerous service awards. Then, Mike became the lead instructor of a tactical training group before moving back to New Hampshire to work as a Critical Care and Flight paramedic. If that wasn’t enough, Mike then went to and graduated from Medical School before completing his residency in Emergency Medicine, as well as fellowships in EMS and Critical Care, at the University of New Mexico Health Science Center.

Currently, Mike works as an attending critical care and EMS physician at the University of Washington, and is the Associate Medical Director at Airlift Northwest.

Suffice to say, Mike brings an exceptional wealth of experience and perspective on what constitutes a high performing team and a high performing individual, and the factors required to maintain operational momentum even during unfavourable circumstances. Nat and Mike discuss this and much more in what are two episodes full of absolute gold.

I predict these episodes will become mandatory listening for human factors and team performance enthusiasts, and rightly so.

Chat soon!

We are delighted to be sponsored by Corpuls - delivering high-tech and innovative equipment for emergency and intensive care medicine for over 35 years.

Hello and welcome back to the Sydney HEMS debrief, focus on cardiac arrest.

This week, we are very excited to deep dive into defibrillation. Join us as we talk through the physics of defibrillation, what is needed to get defibrillation as good as it can be, and what to do when defibrillation is simply not working.

We are delighted to be joined this week by Michael Heller. Michael is a paramedic by background, who now works as a medical engineer focused on defibrillation. Michael studied Rescue Engineering in Germany, and combining his clinical background is now a defining expert voice on defibrillation, and an excellent educator.

Too, we are delighted to be joined again by CCP Jackie, the educator for the Sydney pre-hospital ECMO/cardiac arrest car. In this episode, Jackie reflects on her experience backing up crews attending cardiac arrests, and how this experience has shaped her appreciation of the importance of good and judicious defibrillation, the barriers to making this happen, and how we as providers can all improve our defibrillation practice.

We hope you enjoy this episode, and as ever please send any feedback to me (Sam).

Have a great week!

We are delighted to be sponsored by Corpuls - delivering high-tech and innovative equipment for emergency and intensive care medicine for over 35 years.