Expedition and wilderness medicine: update session

Expedition medicine offers an exciting opportunity to combine your medical skills with travel, field research and exploration. This gathering is intended to share experiences and encourage best practice.

The workshop is hosted by members of the Society's Expedition Medicine Advisory Group. As a collective of experienced expedition medical professionals who have travelled far and wide, they are looking forward to sharing their experiences, so that participants can be better prepared when starting out as expedition medics.

This session will be led by Dr Sophie Redlin, expedition doctor and researcher in Mental Health and Moral Injury, with guests from diverse roles across the expedition, military, and humanitarian sectors. It will explore the ethical challenges commonly posed by expeditions, particularly for team medics in a position of responsibility and care, highlighting how these challenges have the potential to precipitate moral distress and injury if not resolved.

Session participants will be invited to join the discussion, ask questions of the panel and share their own experiences if they would like to.

This session aims to increase awareness of this side of expedition life amongst the community so that medics feel empowered to better protect themselves in this regard, as well as their team members.

Find out more about the Expedition and wilderness Medicine Advisory Group.

Programme

Formal presentations will be followed by a Q&A and discussions with other attendees, followed by a pay bar.

The afternoon will be chaired by Professor Chris Imray.

Session one: 2.00pm-4.00pm

• Combining a career in global health with family life abroad – Munro Moffat
• Keeping healthy on expedition: prevention and treatment of back-pain
  Jill Geyer
• Exploration Psychology: preparing explorers more effectively for expeditions – Jonathan Rhodes
• Recruiting medics for challenging overseas expeditions for young people - Drew Cartwright , British Exploring Society

Session two: 4.30pm-5.45pm

• Ethics and moral challenges of expeditions
• Chaired by Dr Sophie Redlin, with Diane Bird, Mark Bailey, and Benjamin Alba

Networking and refreshments: 5.45pm-9.00pm

Opportunity to attend (free-of-charge) the opening talks of the RGS Explore weekend: Welcome home: postcards from the field.

Meet our speakers

Professor (Col) Mark Bailey

Professor Mark Bailey is a military consultant physician in infectious diseases and tropical medicine with clinical and academic roles at the Universities of Birmingham and Warwick.

Mark has led a number of foreign health missions over the years and was involved in the military response to the Sierra Leone Ebola outbreak in 2014.

Dr Ben Alba

Ben is an emergency medicine registrar and concept founder of Ubuntu Network. He has worked all over the UK and specialises in high-altitude expeditions, having worked in Africa, Central Asia and the Himalaya.

He has a passion for remote and rural medicine and feels honoured to have worked with marginalised populations in the UK as well as indigenous populations across the world, including the Swahili, Māori and Sherpa people.

As a keen team sportsman, he truly believes in the power of teamwork and team building and he hopes that the effort of Ubuntu can inspire the current and future of wilderness medical providers to keep leading and providing an amazing service.

Wing Commander Diana Bird

Di joined the RAF as a Provost Officer in 2002 and during her career has served in a variety of roles and locations from the fjords of Norway to the deserts of Iraq.

Her most recent operational deployment was in 2021 to Kabul where she commanded the RAF personnel on the ground for the evacuation.

Di is currently employed as a Human Security in Defence advisor at the Ministry of Defence.

Booking information

• Advance booking for this event is required. In order to book you will need an account on our website. If you already have an account you will be prompted to log in when you click 'book now'. Please create an account if you do not have one yet (you do not need to be a member of the Society to create an account).
• We do not issue tickets (electronic or physical) for this event. Instead your name will be on a list at the door. Please use the Society's entrance on Exhibition Road.

If you have any questions or require assistance with your booking, please email events@rgs.org

Accessibility at our events

We want everyone to feel welcome at our events. Key accessibility features of this event include:

• Step-free access to the event
• Accessible toilets
• Assistance dogs are welcome
• Hearing loop

For full details, please visit our accessibility page. If you have any questions or specific access requirements, feel free to get in touch with us on access@rgs.org