This year's Extreme Medicine Conference will be a truly inspiring event…
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This year’s Extreme Medicine Conference will be a truly inspiring event…
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BBC Wildlife – an unexpected pleasure
It isn’t often that a medical conference gets featured in BBC Wildlife Magazine – ‘Discover Wildlife’ but then Extreme Medicine is different as this report on the work of WEM speaker Prof. Craig Franklin highlights…
Undertaking one of the world’s largest and longest-running tracking programmes of its kind, Professor Craig Franklin — School of Biological Science at the University of Queensland and also Director of Research at the Steve Irwin Wildlife Reserve — focused on the responses of saltwater crocodiles to changing environmental conditions, including the impact of human-induced environmental change.
To gather data, Franklin’s team — including Steve Irwin’s daughter, Bindi Irwin — surgically inserted transmitters into more than 150 saltwater crocodiles, enabling the researchers to monitor the locations and body temperatures of the animals.
“The reason that we measure the crocodiles’ body temperature is that it governs, to a major extent, the physiology of organisms, from how they move to how they process food and how long they can stay underwater,” explains Franklin.
The resulting 5 million individual recordings from the reptiles yielded some surprising findings: “We have had some beautiful results that show that a small increase in water temperature has a huge impact on the crocodiles’ ability to hold their breath underwater,” says Franklin. “We’ve seen crocodiles dive for up to seven hours at a time.”
The study looked at saltwater crocodiles from a tropical river system in Australia, whose body temperatures were found to conform to their aquatic environment, mimicking the temperature of the water.
“That goes against the paradigm for crocodiles in that they bask and warm up,” says Franklin. “That doesn’t seem to be the case with our animals.”
Franklin will be presenting his findings to the World Extreme Medicine Conference in Edinburgh in November, hoping that his research into physiology of crocodiles and other animals could have some future application to medicine.
Conference Founder Mark Hannaford ‘Medicine across the animal kingdom can add so much to the advancement of human medicine and working with Prof. Franklin is part our work to build cognitive links between medical and animal health professionals.
Humanitarian Aid: What Happens When the Cameras Go Home?
When many people consider humanitarian aid in disaster situations, they think about the media’s coverage of the crisis: people being rescued, aid packages being delivered, shelters being built. But what happens when the cameras leave?
Peter Skelton, a London-based Physiotherapist and Rehabilitation Project Manager with Handicap International (www.handicap-international.org.uk/), a c
harity which remains in a disaster-affected region for months after the public’s attention has moved on.
Peter specialises in helping people injured during emergencies, often in countries with limited resources and support frameworks. Speaking about his work, Peter said, “Most people’s experiences of physiotherapy in the UK come from their own direct interactions with a physiotherapist, normally because of a sports injury, back pain or a similar issue. That experience is completely different if you’ve had a major accident such as a spinal injury or an amputation, when you will see a very different side to physiotherapy.
“In many ways, the work we are doing in disaster situations is not markedly different from what we would do in major trauma centres within the UK. The difference is linked to the resources we have available, and the situations in which people find themselves.
“Invariably, in the UK when you provide treatment, you know that people can get access to the follow-up care that they need, you know that they’ll have support from social services if they need it, and they’ll generally have a supportive family around. There are all sorts of systems set up to support people while they are unwell and throughout the recovery process. In a disaster zone you generally don’t have access to these.
“We aren’t dealing with disaster injuries in isolation. Frequently, patients will have not only experienced a catastrophic injury, but may also have lost their home, their business, family members, friends. The country itself may also be experiencing severe upheaval so they are unlikely to have the same social support that we expect to be available in the UK.”
Peter Skelton works for Handicap International (www.handicap-international.org.uk/), an international aid organisation working alongside disabled and vulnerable people in situations of poverty and exclusion, conflict and disaster. He has worked in emergency teams responding to crises in Ecuador, Nepal, Gaza, Iraq, the Philippines, Libya, Jordan and Haiti.
Peter Skelton will be speaking at the World Extreme Medicine Conference and Expo (http://www.extrememedicineexpo.com/) at Dynamic Earth, Edinburgh, EH8 8AS on 18 November 2016, focusing on the issue of psychological first aid.
The Psychological First Aid training package was developed by the World Health Organisation, and is targeted at anybody that is helping out in response to a disaster: humanitarian aid workers, medical professionals and even laypeople. It is designed to give a basic framework that they can use to deliver immediate support to people in disasters.
Peter said, “There is a misconception that the victims of disaster are always traumatised. Actually, my experience has been that people in disasters are incredibly resilient. What they really need is access to things like shelter, food and water, and if you can help them to meet those needs then they’re going to be fine.
“It’s only a much smaller number of people that require any specialist intervention and psychological first aid comes in one level below that.”
Mark Hannaford, founder of conference organisers World Extreme Medicine, said, “Peter is a hugely respected figure on the UK humanitarian scene, and his perspective is of particular interest because of his experience of the long term rehabilitation of disaster victims.
“World Extreme Medicine was founded around a campfire in Namibia, and we coined the phrase ‘World Extreme Medicine’ as an umbrella term for all practices of medicine outside of a clinical environment, whether it is prehospital, disaster and humanitarian, endurance, sport, expedition or wilderness medicine.
“Our message is that there is a great diversity of careers in medicine, and that traditional hospital environments are not the only option for a fulfilling career. To put it into a layperson’s terms, there’s never been a more exciting time to work in medicine.”
The World Extreme Medicine Conference and Expo brings together leading experts from around the globe to share learnings on prehospital care, expedition and wilderness medicine, sport, endurance, humanitarian and disaster medicine.
For further information about the World Extreme Medicine Conference and Expo, which takes place 18 – 21 November 2016, please visit: http://www.extrememedicineexpo.com/events/event/extreme-medicine-conference-expo-2016-early/ .
Links:
World Extreme Medicine Conference and Expo: http://www.extrememedicineexpo.com/
World Extreme Medicine Conference tickets: http://www.extrememedicineexpo.com/events/event/extreme-medicine-conference-expo-2016-early/
Handicap International: https://www.handicap-international.org.uk/
ENDS
High resolution imagery and interviews are available on request. Journalists are invited to attend the conference too and are asked to register their interest as early as possible.
Media information provided by Famous Publicity. For more information, please contact Tina Fotherby at 07703 409 622 or tina@famouspublicity.com or George Murdoch at 0333 344 2341 or george@famouspublicity.com.
About the World Extreme Medicine Conference and Expo:
The World Extreme Medicine Conference and Expo will take place at Dynamic Earth, Edinburgh, EH8 8AS from 18 – 21 November 2016. Bringing together many of the world’s brightest medical minds, it will focus on humanitarian and disaster medicine, expedition medicine, endurance and sports medicine and prehospital medicine. The exposition’s mission is to break down barriers, build bridges and make connections within the extreme medicine community.
The term ‘Extreme Medicine’ was first coined by Mark Hannaford and Sean Hudson as an umbrella term for these extra-clinical medical practices.
About Peter Skelton:
Peter Skelton is a London-based Physiotherapist and Rehabilitation Project Manager with Handicap International (https://www.handicap-international.org.uk/), an international aid organisation working in situations of poverty and exclusion, conflict and disaster. He has worked in emergency teams responding to crises in Ecuador, Nepal, Gaza, Iraq, the Philippines, Libya, Jordan and Haiti.
He previously spent 10 years combining physiotherapy with medical anthropology (the subject of his first degree), balancing work in the NHS in London with projects in Africa and South East Asia.
Peter’s current role involves working in partnership with UK-Med (https://www.uk-med.org/) and the UK Government to train and integrate rehabilitation professionals into the UK Emergency Medical Team – a team of UK-based health professionals who can be rapidly deployed in response to global emergencies.
A message to Extreme Medicine from NASA, WEM'16 is getting closer, Mountain Medicine in Nepa and RS(ed) accreditation news
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A message to Extreme Medicine from NASA, WEM’16 is getting closer, Mountain Medicine in Nepa and RS(ed) accreditation news
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