Eoin: This podcast is presented by Eoin Walker and Rich McGirr and is a Medics Academy podcast. The purpose of this podcast is to provide paramedics an easy-to-access set of resources and educational materials wherever they are. Feel free to take a look at the description in the footnotes of the podcast. Sign up to Medics Academy today to find out even more about what we do and just how much content we put out there for your education. Many thanks.

Eoin: Welcome to the Pre-Hospital Care podcast. We just wanted to take a little while to introduce ourselves and tell you what to expect from the podcast. My name’s Eoin Walker. I work within Critical Care as a paramedic within London. I have 16 years of pre-hospital experience as a paramedic. I’ve worked for 9 years as a flight paramedic. I’ve done a significant amount of expedition medicine and also worked for World Extreme Medicine. My partner in crime is one of my fellow colleagues and I’ll let him introduce himself.

Rich: Hi guys. I’m Rich McGirr. I’m also an Advanced Primary at Critical Care in London. I’ve got about 15 years experience in pre-hospital care. I’m a part-time lecturer for universities. I teach in several courses. I also work for World Extreme Medicine as well. I’m here with Eoin to add a little bit of insight and to bounce off each other when we discuss topics and see where we go. I’ll be the dumb one in the group. I’ll be the one asking the questions that no one knows the answer to, because I don’t know the answer. Hopefully we’ll learn together and explore topics relevant to paramedics when we’re working out there in the field.

Eoin: Part of the reason we thought a podcast might be a good idea is to address some of the contemporary topics which don’t necessarily get taught within the universities or training centres within the UK. For paramedics, nurses, doctors that aspire to work in pre-hospital care, and to address some of these contemporary topics, look at the evidence base and also look at the anecdotal experience from some experience providers. One of my passions is to work outside of silos, really to step outside of the paramedic world and look at how a nurse or a doctor or another provider might provide pre-hospital care. Because, as we know, there’s plenty of ways to skin a cat and there’s plenty of ways to do pre-hospital care. Our passion is to get other specialists on board as well and to give you the most up to date and contemporary information based on a whole variety of experience. Because we do know that variety is the spice of life and it adds to the richness of educational content. So Rich, what might we be expecting from the pre-hospital care podcast?

Rich: We are going to have some experts out there in the field, people that have got experience in dealing with these patient groups so that we can all learn from it. We are going to try and cover topics like the pre-hospital airway, mental health and suicide, topics around leadership and how you might lead or be a follower within an [inaudible] group, traumatic cardiac arrest, we are going to look at some of the drugs that are out there and the treatment around that, the problems you might face, some pay management episodes and hopefully a lot more. We are going to aim to do ten podcasts initially in these series. And if you guys are interested and share the podcasts around with friends and you start to learn we’ll pick up more topics so it will be a regular thing.

Eoin: Absolutely, and I think part of the endeavour is getting to grips with personal experience. I know Rich was a patient at one point, he broke his leg quite recently. So it’s just getting personal experience and being honest within our pre-hospital care experience. I think honesty is refreshing and I think people would always aspire to listen to people that are honest. Not always right, but real. We also want to address some contemporary topics because in the early 2000’s, when I was at university, studying, it was all library-based, all paper copies of things and we know that education and technology have moved on now to the digital age. And it’s a funny thing, this digital learning. We want to bring it in the 21st century, critique a bit of evidence-based medicine as well, so to give you a bit of an idea of what the evidence base is and what our experience says so that you can hopefully blend it too. But as a little bit of a disclaimer, everything we say here probably needs to be researched yourself as well. You need to go away, look at the evidence base, certainly do what your Trust says. Just because you hear it on this podcast doesn’t give you the freedom to go off and do it, but certainly comply with local regulations and policy as well.

Rich: Yeah absolutely, Eoin and I have been in paramedics for several years, and this podcast is a series by paramedics for paramedics or for pre-hospital collisions to help learn from each other’s experience, bringing people that have got a lot more experience perhaps than me and you in certain subjects and also, in part, our experience, for people who might be learning, who might be new. But this isn’t about teaching everything you need to know, just giving you insights to something and a bit of experience and then maybe a platform for you to go and learn a bit more about the topics yourself.

Eoin: Before we leave you, this is going to be a blend of technical and non-technical topics, so we acknowledge and also believe that sometimes what separates the good from the great is good non-technical skills, good leadership, good situational awareness and some of the more prevalent non-technical aspects of care. So it is going to be a blended approach. I was digging into some of the evidence base around the technical aspects, but also certainly looking at some of the specialists and leaders in the field within the non-technical aspects as well. Rich and I are going to be your hosts, we are going to take you through a journey through pre-hospital care, through different topics and hopefully you find it engaging. We’d love you rate and review this on iTunes and give us some feedback because, as Rich says, what we’d like to do is articulate things that you want to hear as listeners and address those topics as well. And if we don’t know (which is probably a large percentage of the case) then we’ll get people that do know about those topics on the podcast. We want to keep it engaging, relevant and contemporary. And we acknowledge that not only paramedics do this, but doctors and nurses as well so we want to make it relevant for everybody. Many thanks from us and it’s goodbye from me.

Rich: And it’s goodbye from him. It’s a very old joke. If you like us and you think we are worth to listen to, or even if you don’t think we are worth listening to, let your friends know about it, shares us around, because the more people listen the more we can do.

Eoin: Absolutely, many thanks guys.

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Eoin: This podcast is presented by Eoin Walker and Rich McGirr and is a Medics Academy podcast. The purpose of this podcast is to provide paramedics an easy-to-access set of resources and educational materials wherever they are. Feel free to take a look at the description in the footnotes of the podcast. Sign up to Medics Academy today to find out even more about what we do and just how much content we put out there for your education.