As many would-be aware in 2019 Townsville was devastated by an unprecedented flood event. Whilst this caused significant devastation to the Townsville community it provided a unique opportunity of inter-agency collaboration, particularly between the ADF and Emergency Services. 

Melissa is an Advanced Care Paramedic with Queensland Ambulance Service and worked closely with the ADF throughout the flood disaster, ultimately helping her community overcome this complex disaster. Melissa shares her experiences and perspective of working closely with the ADF to adapt and overcome the challenges associated with the event whilst many frontline workers also endured destruction and hardship in their community. 

Emily has an established career as an emergency nurse with 15 years in critical care, including 5 years of LifeFlights helicopters before transitioning into the role of Disaster Liason Clinical Nurse Consultant for the Health Disaster Management Unit in Queensland Health. In 2018 Emily was successful in receiving the Churchill Fellowship where she studied a Diploma of Disaster Humanitarian Assistance in New York prior to undertaking research in multiple UN agencies throughout Europe. 

Emily has a unique perspective of both aeromedical retrieval and humanitarian management of mass casualty events with vast international experience in which she discusses throughout this podcast. 

Emily's slides are available on the ATMA website and she has encouraged anyone with specific questions or looking for more information to please reach out to us at [email protected]

Enjoy!

Stu Glover is a paramedic with the Scottish Ambulance Service and a member of the Special Operations Response Team. Prior to his career as a paramedic Stu served in the British Army with multiple deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. In Stu's presentation, he shares a courageous story of the day he became a patient and the long recovery that entailed. Stu discusses how these experiences influenced his decision making and considerations in his future career as a paramedic. 

Stu provides an insight into the capability that the Special Operations Response Team provides throughout Scotland and the United Kingdom.  

This presentation from ATMC19 is by two close friends of ours at ATMA, SCst Dustin "Dusty" Osborne an experienced general duties QPS officer and Prue Snedden a HARU CCP from QAS.

Dustin was fundamental in the roll-out and implementation of the QPS Tactical First Aid program which has seen over 11,000 QPS officers trained in tactical first aid which includes tourniquet (haemorrhage control), chest seals, wound packing and a variety of other critical skills. The program was unprecedented with outstanding results, receiving a winning award at the 2019 World Class Policing Awards as a testament to their efforts. 

Prue is a highly experienced CCP with the QAS HARU unit which consists of a small number of very highly trained paramedics that have and continue to push the boundaries of paramedicine and prehospital trauma care in Australia. Prue reflects on how medics can better facilitate the paradigm shift amongst LE to empower our colleagues to train and implement life-saving care. 

In 2018 we were privileged to host Dr Dan Pronk at ATMC18.

Dr Pronk served as a medical officer within the SASR and 2nd Commando Regiment with multiple international deployments including 4 tours of Afghanistan with the Special Operations Task Group during Australia's effort on the GWOT.

Dr Pronk uses his experience from his overseas deployments to translate and bring home some key lessons learnt on the battlefield.