Phil Cowburn

Medical Director EPRR, South Western Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust

Phil is a consultant in Emergency Medicine working in Bristol.

He has been active in prehospital care since 2004, being co-founder of Great Western Air Ambulance.

He has held medical directorate roles within NHS Ambulance Trusts for over a decade and was appointed as Medical Advisor to the National Ambulance Resilience Unit (NARU) in 2021 to focus on clinical development of national interoperable assets.

He was part of the NHS team revising Major Incident triage tools and led the subgroup that developed the Ten Second Triage tool that has been successfully rolled out across all UK emergency services. Subsequently he has taken on leadership roles in other NHS working groups looking at tranexamic acid, analgesia, and the Clinical Response to Major Incidents (CRMI) project.

In addition to these roles, he provides clinical governance to police specialist units and Fire Rescue Services and is civilian ambulance advisor to UK military prehospital care.

His ethos is to develop well-governed systems that provide seamless care for critically ill or injured patients from the point of first contact through to definitive care. To facilitate this, he has a passion for advancing clinical practice in multidisciplinary teams believing this should be based on competency, rather than professional background.