Post written by Dr Erin Hamill 

Hosted by the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh’s Faculty of Remote, Rural & Humanitarian Healthcare (FRRHH),  a 50-strong crowd took part in our summer event – “UK Global Health Projects, Programmes & Research: Who Does What In Emergency Care?”  – on July 6th in the impressive Surgeons’ Hall in Edinburgh. 

After an introduction to GECCo from Dr Anisa Jafar and to the FRRHH from Prof Tony Redmond, the event kicked off with an overview from Dr Ram Vadi of UK-Med’s operations and their recent involvement in rapid response and surge support to the major earthquake in Turkey in February this year, with care delivered to estimated 20,000 people through interagency working. As most of UK-Med’s members undertake regular roles within the NHS, Dr Vadi highlighted UK-Med’s report ‘Global Health Responders – a shot in the arm for the NHS’  which corroborates the ‘dual benefits’ of involvement, with respondents reporting higher subjective clinical skills, wellbeing, and resilience.

Following on, we heard from RCEM Senior International Officer Victoria De Witt for an update on RCEM’s global activity, with a specific focus on their recent work alongside the Ugandan Ministry of Health in collaboratively developing a robust emergency workforce in Uganda, with the aim of creating 400 Emergency Medicine doctors in the next 5 years. We gained appreciation of the steps required to establish a robust workforce, with Ms De Witt explaining that a series of phases are underway for RCEM to support in this capacity in Uganda – from developing e-learning and virtual support, mentorship, and international exchanges initially to future considerations of fellowships within the UK for Ugandan clinicians. 

Our day then took a (literal) turn for the novel, as attendees rotated around the Concept Carousel, which provided an opportunity to hear from 8 attendees about recent global emergency care projects they have been involvement in – with the additional challenge of each presenter only having a few minutes each to talk the group through their project or research and answer any questions. Certainly a challenge to distil often complex and detailed research interventions into such a short amount of time, but all our presenters did a stellar job, aided by insightful and precise questions from the group.  

You can see scroll through some of the posters from the event below

Questions generated from the Concept Carousel spilled over into our next sessions, as our attendees continued to talk and get to know one another whilst taking part in a networking session, keeping conversations continuous and lively into lunchtime. 

We then moved onto our keynote sessions. First up, we heard from Professor Tony Redmond, Professor Emeritus of International Emergency Medicine at the Humanitarian & Conflict Response Institute, University of Manchester, drawing from his decades of experience in global health work including emergency responses. Prof Redmond commenced the session with reflections on the questions of – what is ‘global health’, who defines it, and what purposes do these definitions serve? Reflection was a key theme of Prof Redmond’s talk, as he highlighted the necessity of self-reflection when engaging in global health work such as interrogating your motives and values, alongside reflections on his experiences of what good leadership looks – ‘credible, visible, approachable, collaborative, inclusive’. 

Our second keynote session saw us hear from Dr Ellen Weber, Editor in Chief of EMJ, on creating high impact low cost research in resource limited settings. Dr Weber elaborated on the role of research in emergency care in LMICs in ‘evaluating care, demonstrating need for change, developing context appropriate solutions, and directing funding’, highlighting the pertinence of research in this capacity as emergency medicine is a relatively new speciality globally. Dr Weber imparted knowledge on maximising validity of research in resource limited contexts which was particularly insightful and applicable in real-world settings’ of attendees, highlighting the cruciality of ethical and sustainability considerations alongside the following advice: ‘start with observational or quasi-experimental studies; capitalise on existing data collection processes, or embed in clinical care; keep processes simple and involve the multidisciplinary team’. 

After the fascinating keynote sessions, our attendees engaged in some breakout workshop sessions: 

These breakout workshops provided a smaller group setting to hear about specific projects and benefit from the knowledge and experience of the workshop speakers, plus ample opportunity to ask questions and discuss pertinent topics with each other and the speakers.  

Returning to our seats, our penultimate session was an overview from Health Development Specialist Kevin Miles from NHS England of the NHS Global Health Fellowship Programme, which aims to create ‘reciprocal leadership development opportunities’, opportunities to ‘focus on quality improvement, research, or clinical projects’, with the ultimate aim of ‘enhancing patient experience, improving health outcomes, and reducing health inequalities’. He also highlighted the impact the programme has on clinicians’ involved in ‘building new skills, motivation, and resilience’ alongside ‘contributing towards career progression and retention’. 

Lastly, Professor Justine Davies of University of Birmingham’s Institute for Global Innovation discussed the known and unknown unknowns in accessing quality injury care in LMICs, with considerations of the factors that affect the quality and access paradigm, alongside the following key take-aways from experiences thus far in her career: ‘possible to rapidly assess system readiness for injury care; there are issues in all dimension of access to care; and ultimately seeking and reaching definitive care shouldn’t be neglected’. 

Following a Q&A session, attendees headed off for some post-event food and further conversations, and so #GECCoEdinburgh2023 came to a close. Contributing towards GECCo’s aim of swapping silos for shared working, the GECCo team have come away feeling invigorated and thinking towards avenues for future events and collaborations… 

You can watch highlights from the event here: