Stephen Hearns MB ChB FRCEM FRCS FRCP FRGS DIMC DRTM

Stephen is a Consultant with Scotland’s Emergency Medical Retrieval Service. This aeromedical retrieval service delivers pre-hospital critical care for major trauma patients, rural hospital secondary retrievals and major incident responses. Inspired by experience gained working on London’s air ambulance and in Queensland Australia, Stephen led the establishment of this team from a small voluntary service in 2004 to what is now a fully government funded aeromedical retrieval organisation with an international reputation.

Stephen has published a number of papers and book chapters relating to emergency medicine and pre-hospital care. He also led the team establishing the Diploma in retrieval and transfer medicine for the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. He developed and contributes to the organisation of the annual UK retrieval conference. Stephen is an Honorary Senior Lecturer in the University of Glasgow.

He has been an active voluntary member of Arrochar mountain rescue team for 20 years and holds the Mountain Leader Award. Stephen acted as medical officer on seven international expeditions in mountain, desert, jungle and arctic environments before establishing the first expedition medicine course in the UK.

Dr Sophie MacDougall

Sophie is currently an ST7 Registrar in Anaesthetics and Intensive Care. She combines this with a passion for pre-hospital medicine in all its forms, both in the UK and abroad.

Last year she completed a one year fellowship with London’s Air Ambulance and Glasgow’s Emergency Medical Retrieval Service, leading to a CCT in PHEM. She has recently been offered a job with Thames Valley Air Ambulance and is looking forward to starting with them.

She has provided medical cover for over 20 expeditions to extreme environments including arctic, altitude, jungle, arctic, diving and desert. One of her recent challenges was to provide medical cover and co-ordination for a 17000km classic car rally down the entire length of South America. She is also co-director of Faraway Medicine, a company that runs international remote medicine courses around the world.

 Her main job however is to be the mum of two manic little boys who are beginning to climb their own mountains!

Wayne Auton

Wayne joined the North East Ambulance Service as a student paramedic after leaving the Royal Marines. After qualifying as a paramedic he spent time on frontline ambulances and rapid response cars in and around Newcastle. 

Wayne then moved to Scotland and gained experience as a team member in a Scottish mountain rescue team and has worked on both Helimed 76 and Helimed 5. After a short time back in his native North East of England he was back in Scotland as a Search and Rescue winchman based in Aberdeen.

Wayne is now a Specialist Retrieval Practitioner with EMRS conducting specialist transfers of critically ill or injured patients across Scotland as well as providing enhanced trauma care in the pre-hospital environment.

Cheryl Logan

Cheryl is a Paramedic with the Glasgow Air Ambulance Division. In addition to clinical duties, this role includes operating as a Technical Crew Member on the H145 helicopter, fixed wing air transfers on the King Air and managing trauma asset response in Ambulance Control.

Prior to graduating as a Paramedic from the University of Northampton in 2012, Cheryl was a Medic in the Royal Air Force. During her five years of service, she deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan in various roles ranging from strategic aeromedical evacuation to tactical aeromed as part of the front line Medical Emergency Response Team (MERT) on Merlin and Chinook helicopters.

She often hears how well suited to helicopter work she is. This is entirely down to her being half the height of the average adult, allowing the pilot to take on an extra 20 mins of fuel.

Dawn Hewat

Dawn is an Advanced Practitioner in Critical Care trainee, recently appointed as part of Scotland’s Major Trauma Network. Dawn is based in Edinburgh, splitting her time between the Scottish Ambulance Service, Edinburgh Royal Infirmary Emergency Department and their pre-hospital trauma team – Medic 1. Previous roles have included advanced practice in primary care and paramedic for 12 years, including time with the 3Ru cardiac arrest team.

Dawn teaches regularly with BASICS Scotland on their adult & paediatric courses. Outside work, Dawn has 4 children and a granddaughter and has a passion for cycling and running, as well as whisky. 

Dr Tatiana Zhelezniakova

Tatiana is currently a Foundation Year 1 doctor working in Aberdeen/Stornoway. She is the general secretary for the Faculty of Pre-Hospital Care Student and Junior Trainee Group, which aims to encourage student participation and understanding of Pre-Hospital Care.

Four weeks with the Essex & Herts Air Ambulance Trust and an elective in a Cape Town emergency department have been incredible experiences which served to confirm her aspirations to work in this field. Her two main ambitions are to specialise in Emergency and Pre-Hospital medicine and to conquer helicopter-induced travel sickness.

Dave Bywater

Dave has been a member of BASICS Scotland for over ten years. During that time he has been an active voluntary responder in rural Scotland. An experienced member of the BASICS Scotland education faculty, Dave directs as well as teaches Pre-Hospital Emergency Care, Pre-hospital paediatric life support and major incident management courses. He is currently the Chair of the board for BASICS Scotland.

Dave has worked with the Scottish Ambulance Service since1996, qualifying as a Paramedic in 2001.He has experience working in remote and rural as well as urban areas across Scotland. He has had previous roles as a Paramedic Practitioner, Special Operations Paramedic, Clinical Advisor and Practice placement Educator. In his current role as Consultant Paramedic, he is the lead for the Scottish Ambulance Service’s commitments to the National out of Hospital Cardiac Arrest Strategy, representing Scotland at local, national and international levels. He is also responsible for Paediatric care. Dave conducts regular clinical shifts with the air ambulance service. 

Dr Jonathan Hanson

Jonathan is a Consultant in Sport and Exercise medicine with special interest in Emergency Medicine at NHS Fife having earned his stripes in remote and rural emergency medicine on Skye.

He's worked in high performance sport for over 15 years having recently been selected for his third Olympic games in Tokyo with Team GB. He was part of Gareth Southgate's medical staff with England at the FIFA World Cup in Russia looking after head injury recognition and non-technical skills in immediate care.

More recently he is team doctor for Glasgow Warriors and has toured the South Pacific and South Africa with the Scotland Rugby team. He is chair of the Scottish Government advisory group on Sports related concussion that developed the worlds first single guideline for all sports via the "If in doubt sit them out" campaign.

Sandra Stark

I am a Registered Children’s Nurse and a Registered Adult nurse. I have worked in Paediatric Intensive Care and retrieval for in excess of 25 years. I am currently Head of Service and Nurse Consultant for Paediatric retrieval with ScotSTAR. I began my career in Adult nursing and then moved to Paediatric Nursing, specializing in Paediatric intensive care and then ultimately in Paediatric Retrieval and ScotSTAR. ScotSTAR became part of the Scottish Ambulance Service in 2014 amalgamating Neonatal, Paediatric, Adult retrieval and Air ambulance. I lead the paediatric team, working in a clinical capacity as well as managerial providing support and outreach to the team and also to the referring units within Scotland.

Fiona Young

Fiona is a paramedic for the Special Operations Response Team (SORT). Originally based in her home town of Fort William in the Scottish highlands, she relocated to the big bad central belt to join Special Operations. Prior to working for the ambulance service Fiona studied traditional Scottish music at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (RCS) and toured around the world playing the accordion. In her spare time, Fiona enjoys cooking fine food, visiting farm shops and Les Mills Body Pump classes. She is a proud parent of Polly the Pointador (Face of Amazon Pets 2019).

Dr Mark Davidson

I have trained as a paediatric intensivist and have several areas of specific interest and expertise including ECMO, cardiac intensive care, flexible bronchoscopy, retrieval medicine and medical education.
I have been a consultant at the Royal Hospital for Children, Glasgow for the past 12 years where I am Co-Director of the ECMO Service as well as the Lead Clinician for Cardiac PICU. Part of my time is also spent working for ScotSTAR. Out with the hospital I am chair of the Paediatric Intensive Care Society ECMO Group and lead the certification workgroup of the ELSO Education Taskforce.

In my spare time I coach at the local rugby club and enjoy canni-cross and a wee bit of cycling.