Well it’s been a minute since our last episode, but we are delighted to be back with a very special episode in a format that we haven’t tried before. A few weeks ago, This Emergency Life packed up our recording equipment and headed up to the Australasian College of Paramedicine (ACP) inaugural 2023 Critical Care Summit on the Gold Coast to record a live episode of the podcast.

The ACP is the peak professional body representing and supporting paramedics and student paramedics across Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand since 1973. The ACP 2023 Critical Care Summit was the first time this novel and inspiring meeting has taken place and boy have they set a high bar. The summit is the brainchild of Intensive Care Paramedic and Senior Lecturer at Monash University Department of Paramedicine, Tim Andrews and senior Intensive Care Flight Paramedic (MICA) with Ambulance Victoria and Adjunct Senior Lecturer Dr Ben Meadley. Tim and Ben brought together a broad program of interdisciplinary speakers and teams for two days of targeted education and engagement with the central theme Contemporary care through collaboration.

TEL were invited to record a live-on-stage episode of the podcast with free range to pick the episode’s guests for a chat about… well whatever we wanted! As you can imagine it was no easy task narrowing down our guest list to three people from the overwhelming expertise and experience represented by the delegates and speakers at the summit.

During the live podcast we spoke with flight paramedic and PhD candidate Hanna Latta, Director Australasian College of Paramedicine and Senior Paramedic Specialist, Marty Nichols and Ben Meadley. These are three people who have a lot to say about the past, present and future of emergency care in Australasia.  During the hour we spoke to Hanna, Ben and Marty about everything from the nexus between pre-hospital care and the ED, the evolving roles of paramedics and primary health care, advanced and specialist practice in pre-hospital care and the emergency care community’s roles and responsibilities in society.

Our sincerest thanks the Australasian College of Paramedicine, Tim and Ben and everybody at the summit for the invitation and making us feel so welcome. We hope you enjoy hearing from Hanna, Ben and Marty as much as we enjoyed talking to them live on stage.

This month on the podcast we speak with Dr Mya Cubitt. Mya is an Emergency Physician whose clinical emergency work extends across the public and private emergency care sector in Victoria, Australia.  However, like with many of our guests, Mya has several roles that extend beyond the clinical floor. Mya is also the Victorian Faculty Chair of ACEM, contributes to the delivery of emergency care at a state level through Safer Care Victoria and has sat on many reference groups through ACEM including the National COVID-19 task force, Health System Reform Committee, Discrimination Bullying and Sexual Harassment Working Group, New Fellows Reference Group, as well as Trauma and Geriatric Special Interest Groups.

During our chat (recorded an embarrassingly long time ago) Mya talks about her very fascinating "peripatetic" medical journey from a focus on paediatrics to adult emergency care and a genuine enthusiasm for improving the care of older people in the ED. We discuss the "boxes" we put various patient groups into and how we can bring together our healthcare teams to improve the care we provide. We also cover a lot of ground on matters that affect our workforce, patients and healthcare system more broadly.

While my fellow podcaster John Thompson works regularly on the ED floor with Mya, I have not. My interactions with Mya have been limited to various emergency care groups, but I have a very strong sense that she is 'one of those' consultants that brightens your day when you know she's on shift. I think you will agree that Mya is just the type of thoughtful, kind and inspiring leader that emergency care needs, and we hope you enjoy or chat as much as we did.

After an extended summer hiatus, This Emergency Life returns for its third season. This year the podcast will be released monthly with the occasional bonus episodes when the need arises. We hope you will join us for what we hope will be a less demanding year than the last two have proved to be.

What better way to kick off season three of the podcast than to sit down and chat with The College of Emergency Nursing Australasia’s National President, Associate Professor Julia Morphet. Julia is an Associate Professor at Monash Nursing and Midwifery, the National President of The College of Emergency Nursing Australasia (CENA), Monash Health Senior Research Fellow (Emergency) and is the 2021 recipient of the Julie Finucane OAM Medal for Leadership in Emergency Nursing - the highest honour awarded by CENA.

Many of you will know Julia as a passionate voice for emergency care, author of more than 80 peer reviewed papers and book chapters, accomplished public speaker and a considerate and articulate emergency care thought leader. However, with all of this comes a very busy schedule which has taken us two years to penetrate and find the time to speak with her. Though we do suspect that her genuine humility and reluctance for self-promotion has also kept Julia from coming on the show to date.

During the podcast, we hear about Julia’s ‘back story’, her research and her thoughts on emergency care workforce and practice preparation. Oh, and we also hear Julia’s response to the perennial TEL question… in an ideal world what would the state of emergency care look like?

It was delightful to finally catch up with Julia and we hope you find her insights as engaging, insightful and enjoyable as we did. We look forward to bringing you more stories from the emergency care community in 2022 and thank you all for your support of the podcast.