The Resus Room

It’s something we all encounter in emergency and prehospital care, probably more than anything else, yet it’s a topic we’ve not given a full episode to… until now!

Up to 70% of prehospital patients and 60–90% of ED attendees report pain, with half of all ED presentations having pain as the primary complaint. That’s millions of patients across Europe every year and we’re not always optimising our approach!

In this episode, we’re div...

Welcome back to June 2025's papers podcast!

Having been cynical about CPR feedback devices in the past we take a look at a recent paper on their use and their potential impact to both ROSC and survival for patients, when compared to standard practice; is it time to integrate them more definitively into our practice?

Next up we take another look at the use of adrenaline in traumatic arrest. We've covered this before and there's some...

Welcome back! In this episode, we’re diving deep into something we all think we know, the Glasgow Coma Scale.

The GCS has been a fundamental part of assessing patients with altered consciousness for over 50 years. You’ll find it in trauma scores, neurology exams and practically every prehospital and ED handover. But here's the thing, is it as reliable and useful as we think?

In this episode, we’ll explore the origins of the scale, ...

Welcome back to the podcast!

We've got three papers this month covering the breadth of Emergency Care presentations and locations; from prehospital arrests, ketamine for analgesia in trauma and those complex elderly patients presenting with abdominal pain.

First up we look at the use of prehospital thrombolysis for out of hospital cardiac arrest, something some critical care services are using for suspected PEs and MIs. But what ar...

Opioid toxicity is a major and growing challenge across the UK and beyond, with nearly 10 deaths every day from opioid overdose and over a million adults using Class A drugs annually, the impact on emergency services is enormous.

In this episode, we’re diving deep into the recognition and management of acute opioid toxicity in the emergency setting, including the reversal using naloxone.

We’ll run through;

Welcome back to April's Papers of the Month!

First up this month we have a think about posterior circulatory strokes, which can mimic benign vertigo, and can be really tricky to differentiate between a completely benign issue or a stroke that is really important to pick up. Clearly imaging everyone is one option but completely impractical when you consider the gold standard of MRI. So having a bedside tests to rule in or out the di...

Welcome back to The Resus Room! This time, we’re diving into the fascinating and often overlooked world of electrical injuries. From household mishaps and workplace accidents to tasers and even lightning strikes, electrical injuries can range from minor shocks to life-threatening cardiac arrests.

As always, we’ll be taking you through the full spectrum of care, from first contact at the roadside to critical management in resus. And...

Welcome back to March 2025's papers podcast!

We start off this month with a fascinating paper looking at the experiences of relatives who were witness to unsuccessful resuscitation. We often talk on the podcast about the impact of medical or technical interventions, but this paper offer us an opportunity to consider the huge impact of our non-technical elements of practice and reflect on how we can best support relatives whilst sti...

Cardiac Arrest in pregnancy affects around 1: 12-30,000 women in the developed world.

As you’d expect the risk of death for mother and child is extremely high, but some causes of arrest are reversible and we can make a real impact with our care and treatment of these cases

Now it goes without saying that these are some of the most emotive, complex and technically challenging Resuscitations that you could think to be involved in; by...

Welcome back to February 2025's papers podcast!

This month we're exploring papers on seizure management, oxygen strategies in trauma, along with transfusion strategies in patients with traumatic brain injuries.

First up we look at at a paper exploring the potential benefit of adding ketamine into the strategy for treating patients with status epilepticus. Does it help to more reliably terminate seizures and what can we take from th...

Welcome back to the first Roadside to Resus episode for 2025!!

In this episode, we’re diving into a seasonally appropriate, and really paediatric common presentation for anyone involved in emergency care….Bronchiolitis. 

Now although it’s one of the most common respiratory illnesses affecting kids, bronchiolitis can easily cause confusion and concern around the severity of illness, whether to convey/admit/discharge, and also which ...

Happy New Year!!!

We hope you've had some time off over the festive period and now we're back to kick start the new year with three more great papers.

Syncope is common presentation to the Emergency Department, accounting for 1% of presentations. Without a clear precipitant of the event it can be challenging to identify those patients who have a higher risk of associated morbidity and mortality, and furthermore those who would bene...

This is an episode we've been wanting to cover for a long time now! In it we explore the challenges in entering and developing in prehospital critical care, which translate into pretty much developing in any new role both in and out of health care.

We cover some pretty personally challenging experiences and the strategies that both clinicians new to prehospital critical care may find useful to employ. We also discuss how supervisor...

A really strong line up of papers to bring this year's evidence round up to a close!

First up we take a look at a paper evaluating the utility of pulse oximetry (along with several other diagnostic tests) in identifying vascular injury following trauma, a really interesting look at an approach we didn't know much about.

Next up we run through PARAMEDIC-3, a huge RCT looking at the best vascular access strategy for patients in cardi...

Motor vehicle collisions or road traffic collisions are a massive problem worldwide. Data from the World Health Organisation reports that there are around 1.2 million deaths every year and this is the leading cause of death internationally for children and young adults aged 5-29 years. 

In the UK there are around 1,500 deaths annually and also around 60,000 patients with significant and life changing injuries, which is 7 patients e...

Welcome back to the podcast and to November's Papers of the Month!

We start off looking at the rate of pneumothoraces in patients following ROSC after a medical cardiac arrest. What is the incidence? Are there any risk factors? And how might this affect our index of suspicion and imaging practice?

We've spoken before about how difficult vertigo can be as a presentation to the Emergency Department; really common, often benign but wi...

In this episode we’re going to be running through adrenal presentations; both Adrenal insufficiency and Adrenal Crisis. There are some parts of these that aren’t completely understood and a lack of a universal definition of Adrenal Crisis, but both insufficiency and a crisis are similar problems at different points on a spectrum and solid understanding of the endocrinology and physiology can really help to improve care in this area...

Welcome back to October's Papers of the Month. We've been really spoilt with three fantastic papers to discuss this month!

First up we take a look at the accuracy of non-invasive blood pressure readings in critically unwell patients in the prehospital environment and see how they could falsely reassure in both hypotension and hypertension.

Next up we take a look at the superb SHED study, which looks to evaluate the accuracy of a pl...

PE’s (or Pulmonary Emboli) are a key part of Emergency Care, something that many of us will consider as a differential diagnosis multiple times of a daily basis, in a similar way to acute coronary syndrome, so we need to be absolute experts on the topic!

A PE normally occurs when a Deep Vein Thrombosis shoots off to the pulmonary arterial tree, occurring in 60-120 per 100,000 of the population per year

The inhospital mortality is 1...