Members of the CaHRU team together with colleagues from East Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust attended the 999 EMS Research Forum conference, ‘Making it happen: delivering research in pre-hospital care’ at the Assembly Rooms in Newcastle on 1 March 2016. The event was organised by the 999 EMS Forum in collaboration with North East Ambulance Service NHS Trust and Newcastle University.

The conference was opened by Yvonne Ormston, Chief Executive of North East Ambulance Service and introduced by Prof Helen Snooks, Professor of Health Services Research at Swansea University and chair of the EMS 999 Research Forum. The opening keynote was given by Dr Simon Woods of Newcastle University on ‘Ethics and consent in pre-hospital research’. This was followed by a number of oral presentations from the highest scoring abstracts submitted to the conference. This included a presentation by Dr Mohammad Iqbal, research associate at East Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust and research fellow at CaHRU, who presented his doctoral study, ‘Non randomised control study of the effectiveness of a novel pain assessment tool for use by paramedics’. After the oral presentations there was a further keynote from Dr Chris Price of Newcastle University on ‘Delivering safe pre-hospital research: a stroke perspective’.

Poster sessions included a presentation from Fiona Togher, graduate research assistant at CaHRU on her doctoral research, ‘Refining questionnaire items in a Patient Reported Experience Measure (PREM) designed for users of NHS ambulance services: Question Appraisal Study’. The afternoon session included a workshop given by Prof Niro Siriwardena and Dr Adele Langlois supported by Dr Stephanie Armstrong, on ‘Ethics and consent in pre-hospital research’, which form part of the Network exploring Ethics of Ambulance Trials funded by the Wellcome Trust. The workshop was well attended and generated ideas on consent, confidentiality, and privacy in relation to ambulance trials as well as ideas on future research.

The final keynote was given by Dutch researcher, and acute physician, Dr Prabath Nanayakkara on his ‘Research in the pre-hospital management of sepsis: opportunities and challenges’. The conference was closed by Prof Siriwardena, with prizes presented to the best research, best poster, research most likely to affect practice and best use of data, and thanks given to the organisers for an excellent and memorable event.