tRAINING COURSE Speakers
The Training Course Officers coordinate teaching from eminent and highly experienced professionals from the many fields which are part of wilderness and expedition medicine.
Professor Mike Tipton
Mike Tipton is a world-renowned expert on extreme environment physiology and one of the go-to points of information for things related to immersion. Mike Tipton has been awarded and MBE for physiological research in extreme environments. He worked for 10 years with the Royal National Lifeboat Institution’s Medical & Survival Committee, and helped to develop the successful ‘Float to Live’ campaign. He was Senior Editor of the journal “Extreme Physiology and Medicine” until 2016 and is currently Editor-in-Chief of The Physiological Society’s journal “Experimental Physiology”. He has published over 600 scientific papers, reports, and chapters in the fields of physiological, pathophysiological and psychological responses to adverse environments and the selection, preparation and protection of those who enter such environments.
Doctor Shawna Pandya
Dr Shawna Pandya is a physician, speaker, martial artist, citizen-scientist astronaut candidate with Projects PoSSUM & PHEnOM, and prime crew aquanaut with Project Poseidon. Through her involvement with Project PoSSUM, Dr. Pandya was part of the first crew to test a commercial spacesuit in micro-gravity. She has also completed centrifuge studies, emergency spacecraft egress and sea survival training, and wilderness medicine training. She also currently serves at the Life Sciences Team Lead for Association of Spaceflight Professionals and the Life Sciences Chair for the Canadian Space Society.
Doctor Russell Hearn FAWM
Dr Hearn is the Deputy Director of Community Education and the Stage 3 GP Block lead for the MBBS curriculum. He was recently appointed MBBS Programme Director for the King’s collaboration with the University of Portsmouth. He is also the programme lead for our intercalated BSc in Primary Care and the module lead for Doctor as Teacher for Stage 2 medical students.
Outside of KCL, Dr Hearn is a GP partner in North London and is also the Pan-London Academic GP Training Programme Director working with Health Education England. His primary research interests are in medical education. He also has specialist interests in simulation, access to medicine, pre-hospital medicine and wilderness & expedition medicine.
Doctor Constance Osborne FAWM
Dr Constance Osborne is an F3 doctor working in Bristol. She has a keen interest in medicine in remote environments and has been an active participant of KCL’s Wilderness Medicine Society for several years, having been a training course officer herself, returning each year to teach the next cohort of students. She was previously an academic trainee and has skills in qualitative research, which she is eager to apply to wilderness settings. She has full FAWM accreditation and is currently in her second year of a diploma in tropical medicine at the Liverpool school of tropical medicine.
Doctor Ross Pollock
Dr Ross Pollock is a lecturer in Aerospace Physiology in the Centre of Human & Applied Physiological Sciences at KCL. He is the co-director for the KCL MSc Aerospace Medicine course, and works on the MSC Human & Applied Physiology and BSc Sport and Exercise Medical Sciences.
Professor Stephen Harridge
Professor Stephen Harridge is a Professor of Human and Applied Physiology at KCL. Prof Harridge is the Director of the Centre of Human and Aerospace Physiological Sciences.
Prof Harridge will be coming back to speak to our training course this year, talking to us about extreme exercise physiology and the implications for athletes in extreme environments.
Doctor James Clark
Dr James Clark is a lecturer in Human & Applied Physiology at KCL, and is the director of the Human & Applied Physiology MSc.
Dr Clark has worked extensively in cardiovascular research, and is the Academic Lead for Education for the School of Cardiovascular Medicine and Sciences. As well as his research in cardiovascular sciences, Dr Clark's research spans a range of applied physiology. Dr Clark has experience in hyperbaric and dive medicine, particularly the cardiovascular implications of dive physiology.
Doctor Brendan Fletcher
Dr Fletcher is a consultant in Emergency medicine and Paediatric Emergency medicine at Cambridge University Hospitals NHS foundations trust. He began working with the East Anglian Air Ambulance 5 years ago and now splits his time between emeritus shifts with EAAA and working in the Paediatric ED at Addenbrook’s hospital. He is an annual lecturer for the prehospital emergency medicine intercalated BSc run by Queen Mary’s University, where he delivers a talk about paediatric trauma, how it differs to adult victims of trauma and therefore how our management changes. He will be coming to King's for the first time to deliver a similar talk to the students on the training course. Furthermore he spent 6 years volunteering for the RNLI.
London Search & Rescue (LONSAR)
London Search & Rescue (LONSAR) is a Lowland Rescue team, assisting the Metropolitan Police in searches for vulnerable missing persons. LONSAR is a registered charity and staffed 100% by volunteers. They are on-call 24/7 365 days a year, and work in all weathers, providing life-saving services for the 10 million people who live, work and travel in London. In addition to SAR duties, LONSAR crews can be deployed to assist agencies such as the London Resilience Forum to provide safety services to the community.
Doctor Tom Georgi
Tom Georgi is currently an Anaesthetics Core Trainee working at East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust. He has previously completed the FAWM accredited King College London Wilderness Medicine Society training course and has delivered talks on bioterrorism and the psychological response to injury and crisis to students in following years of the same training course.
He has experience in humanitarian medicine having worked for the HALO Trust which deals with clearance operations of explosive remnants of war. He has worked in Sri Lanka, Somaliland and Cambodia. He has also undertaken work establishing humanitarian clearance programmes in Colombia, Sri Lanka and Somalia.