David has recently joined Thames Valley Air Ambulance as a pre-hospital doctor.
As the inaugural Kadoorie Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine at the University of Oxford, David is tasked with growing emergency care research within NDORMS. This secondment will ultimately allow David to study treatments that are used to help patients before as well as after they arrive at hospital.
Thames Valley Air Ambulance is a local charity that sends specially trained doctors and critical care paramedics to emergencies across Oxfordshire, Berkshire, and Buckinghamshire. Expert teams deploy by helicopter or critical care response vehicle to cases that require advanced emergency skills at the scene before a patient can be safely transferred to hospital. Thames Valley Air Ambulance does not receive any government or lottery funding and NDORMS will continue to support David’s salary without cost to the charity.
‘This is an amazing opportunity to work with the highly skilled doctors and critical care paramedics at Thames Valley Air Ambulance,' said David. ‘It is a huge privilege to look after the sickest and most severely injured patients in our region and this experience will help also shape the emergency care research programme we are building within NDORMS.’
As a new recruit, David has attended a range of pre-hospital cases, such as cardiac arrests and road traffic collisions. ‘The pre-hospital setting is very different to working in hospital in terms of setting, hazards, types of case, and available resources’, said David. ‘Thames Valley Air Ambulance doctors always attend cases with a critical care paramedic and so I am learning to adapt my training and experience from hospital to this new environment.'
Professor Jonathan Rees, Head of Department at the Nuffield Department of Orthopaedics, Rheumatology and Musculoskeletal Sciences said: ‘I am extremely pleased that David is taking on this important clinical role supporting our local air ambulance. Besides the direct benefit he will have on saving lives in our community, it provides an opportunity to identify areas of emergency care that future research could benefit. David will be able to bring these areas of research need back to the University to inform our research programmes and ensure they remain patient and NHS focused.’