Hello, and welcome back to the Sydney HEMS debrief podcast.

Thank you for your patience – I have been taking the long way home from Canada, but am delighted to be back in Sydney and now ready to go with more episodes of our focused series on cardiac arrest.

In this part one of two episodes, we are pivoting away from the technical towards human factors and team performance. In doing this, we are thrilled to be joined by Dr Mike Lauria.

Mike is a human factors legend. Prior to becoming a Doctor, Mike served as an elite Pararescueman in the 321st Special Tactics Squadron during which time he won numerous service awards. Then, Mike became the lead instructor of a tactical training group before moving back to New Hampshire to work as a Critical Care and Flight paramedic. If that wasn’t enough, Mike then went to and graduated from Medical School before completing his residency in Emergency Medicine, as well as fellowships in EMS and Critical Care, at the University of New Mexico Health Science Center.

Currently, Mike works as an attending critical care and EMS physician at the University of Washington, and is the Associate Medical Director at Airlift Northwest.

Suffice to say, Mike brings an exceptional wealth of experience and perspective on what constitutes a high performing team and a high performing individual, and the factors required to maintain operational momentum even during unfavourable circumstances. Nat and Mike discuss this and much more in what are two episodes full of absolute gold.

I predict these episodes will become mandatory listening for human factors and team performance enthusiasts, and rightly so.

Chat soon!