Emergency Medicine Conference 2013

The Emergency Medicine Conference took place on the 23 and 24 January 2013 at the Hallam Conference Centre, London. Though the conference was comparatively a small gathering, the quality of the event's speakers and the relevancy of issues they tackled were exemplary, with particular focus and attention centred on pre-hospital care, Ambulance Trusts and of course, paramedic practice itself.

Jason Killens, Deputy Director of Operations at the London Ambulance Service provided a summary of the trusts achievements, failures and most importantly, lessons learned in handling the significant and media-sensitive 2012 London Olympic Games. In particular he spoke about the ‘nervousness over industrial action’ at the time of the games, as well as the stress of dealing with ‘admissions from Olympic athletes and their families who attended the games’ a worry no doubt exacerabted with the looming hoards of reporters and journalists ready to pounce on any failure from the LAS, avoidable or not.