EMS Gathering 2016

The EMS Gathering 2016 was held in Killarney on the 9th and 10th of June. This year was the biggest and most successful yet with over 300 people in attendance from all around the world and from many clinical backgrounds. As always, EMS Gathering catered for the broad pre-hospital family. In attendance were First Responders, EMTs, Paramedics, Advanced Paramedics, Nurses and Doctors all sharing a common passion; to strive towards the best possible patient care delivered pre-hospital.

This EMS Gathering had a great mix of inspirational talks in the mornings from some of the foremost experts from Ireland and abroad. The morning session on Thursday was themed on the spectrum from “Cradle to Grave” with talks on out of hospital baby delivery, neonatal resuscitation, OHCA and end of life care. On Friday the focus was trauma; this included perspectives from service providers near and far as to how they do certain things and a truly inspirational patient perspective that reminded us all of the importance of what we do and how we do it. As always the EMS Gathering production team worked hard to stimulate their audience creating a unique environment with comfy sofas and interludes of live music and other quirks that made this a conference unlike any other.

Each afternoon there was a multitude of novel learning with leisure educational activities to choose from. High fidelity immersive simulation is the name of the game at EMS Gathering and delegates chose from a variety of workshops including the highly acclaimed farm injury workshop, tactical EMS, ultrasound, immersive simulation and high performance resuscitation workshops. Back by popular demand, with new updates, were the ‘Sepsis Bus’ which toured the Dingle Peninsula, mountain climbs on Torc and Mangerton where hypothermia and austere extrication were discussed, and fans of golfing and cycling were catered for too with education on a variety of EMS topics.

It is impossible to do justice to each component of the two-day conference in this brief summary. Suffice to say, you could not help but to be educated, inspired, have great fun and make new friends. Video highlights of various workshops and talks from EMS Gathering 2016 will be available on the PHECC website shortly and dates and location for EMS 2017 will be announced soon.