Investigators

Richard Armour

Richard is a Mobile Intensive Care Ambulance (MICA) Paramedic with Ambulance Victoria, Australia, and a Sessional Academic at Charles Sturt University, Australia. Prior to moving to Australia, Richard was an Advanced Care Paramedic, Paramedic Specialist, and Paramedic Practice Leader with BC Emergency Health Services with portfolios including Substance Use & Harm Reduction, Low-Acuity and Integrated Care and Community Paramedicine. Richard is currently completing his PhD at Monash University, Australia, examining modern systems of paramedic care for people who use alcohol and other drugs. Although now geographically distant, Richard remains closely involved in paramedic-related research in British Columbia.

  • MICA Paramedic, Ambulance Victoria
  • Sessional Academic, Charles Sturt University
  • Paramedic Liaison (CORSIP)

Emad Awad

Dr. Awad BSc, MA, PhD has 23 years of academic, clinical, and research experience in emergency health care. Dr. Awad completed his PhD in Experimental Medicine from the University of British Columbia in 2021. His primary research interest focuses on prehospital emergency care provided to patients with life threatening conditions such as cardiac arrest, cardiac arrythmias, and strokes. Dr. Awad has been a member of BC Resuscitation Research since 2017. He has been involved in various aspects of resuscitation research for the last five years. He is the primary author of several studies in resuscitation science conducted in North America and published in peer reviewed journals.

  • Assistant Professor, Department of Emergency Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Utah, USA.

Nick Balfour

  • Executive Medical Director, Clinical Operations at Interior Health Authority

Floyd Besserer

Dr. Besserer is an emergency physician at the University Hospital of Northern BC and also a Northern Medical Program (NMP) graduate. He has faculty appointments with the UBC Department of Emergency Medicine and the University of Northern BC. His research interests are in prehospital care in the remote and rural context.

  • Assistant Professor, UBC Department of Emergency Medicine
  • University Hospital of Northern BC

Jennifer Bolster

Jennifer Bolster is a Paramedic Practice Leader and Advanced Care Paramedic who has practiced in BC for nine years. Prior to joining paramedicine, Jen worked as a community health worker and served in the Canadian Armed Forces as a Medical Technician. In addition to her experience as an ACP, Jen holds teaching appointments at both the Justice Institute of British Columbia and Columbia Paramedic Academy. As a researcher, Jen is an appraiser for the Prehospital Evidence-Based Practice Project at Dalhousie University, as well as a member of the McNally Project for Paramedicine Research. She also holds a paramedic research position with Providence Health Research Institute. She is currently completing her Bachelor of Paramedicine with Charles Sturt University and plans to progress on to PhD studies following the completion of an Honours degree program with Monash University. Jen is actively involved in research into the profession.

  • Paramedic Practice Leader and Advanced Care Paramedic, British Columbia Emergency Health Services

Jonathan Deakin

Jon leads the clinical practice portfolios in cardiac arrest management, stroke, STEMI / ACS, opioid response, and advanced airway management. Jon’s thirty years in the field includes work as an advanced care paramedic, operations manager and lead educator at the School of Health Sciences, Justice Institute of British Columbia. Jon is a member of the Canadian Resuscitation Outcomes Consortium Cardiac Arrest Committee and has published and co-researched articles in prehospital care.

  • Paramedic Practice Leader, British Columbia Emergency Health Services

Sean Van Diepen

Dr. Van Diepen is an academic Cardiologist-Intensivist. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Critical Care Medicine in the Division of Critical Care and he is cross appointed to the Division of Cardiology at the University of Alberta. He completed medical school at the University of Toronto. After moving west, he undertook his Internal Medicine, Cardiology, and Critical Care Training at the University of Alberta. His clinical interests lie in the care of critically ill cardiac patients. He attends in both the cardiovascular surgical intensive care unit and the coronary care unit at the Mazankowski Heart Institute at the University of Alberta. His research interests include critical care cardiology, cardiovascular surgical care, cardiovascular risks of cardiac and non-cardiac surgery and heart failure. He has published multiple manuscripts leading peer reviewed journals and has received multiple research awards including the Canadian Institute for Health Research Resident Research Prize. He is currently on the editorial board of the American Heart Journal.

  • Assistant Professor Division of Critical Care University of Alberta
  • Mazankowski Heart Institute, University of Alberta

Anders Ganstal

  • Regional Medical Director, BCEHS Interior, at AIG Inc.

Matthieu Heidet

Dr. Heidet, MD, PhD, is an emergency physician working at the emergency department and EMS (SAMU 94) the Henri Mondor University Hospital in Créteil, France. . As a member of the EA-3956 lab (Control in Intelligent Networks, CIR) of the University of Paris-Est Créteil (UPEC), his research focuses on the optimization of access to prehospital care, with the use of geographics, artificial intelligence, and technological innovations. He is particularly interested in the reduction of socioeconomic inequalities in access to prehospital care. He joined the Center for Health Evaluation and Outcomes Sciences cardiac arrest research group during his post-doctoral fellowship in 2019, and participated in the creation of the France-Canada registry for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, born from the collaboration between CanROC and its French equivalent, RéAC.

  • Emergency Medicine Physician Henri Mondor University Hospital in Créteil, France
  • Université Paris-Est Créteil (UPEC), LISSI (Images, Signals and Intelligent Systems), EA-3956 CIR/TincNET (Control in Intelligent Networks) Créteil, France

Jennie Helmer

Jennie Helmer is the BCEHS Research Lead and a Paramedic Practice Leader.  Prior to this, Jennie worked as an Advanced Care Paramedic, Unit Chief and Paramedic Specialist. She has been involved in numerous innovative initiatives including the implementation of the BC Emergency Health Services Cardiac Arrest Registry, the Assess, See, Treat and Refer clinical pathways, and the Collaborative Heart Attack Management Program (CHAMP).  She is currently pursuing her PhD at UBC in the School of Population and Public Health and has published and co-researched a number of qualitative and quantitative articles exploring the prehospital environment and paramedic approaches to care.

  • Research Lead and Paramedic Practice Lead at BC Emergency Health Services

Karin Humphries

Dr. Humphries is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia and holds the UBC-Heart and Stroke Foundation Professorship in Women’s Cardiovascular Health. She has a doctoral degree in epidemiology and a background in biochemistry, kinesiology, and experimental pathology. Her primary research focus is on sex and gender differences in the diagnosis, treatment, and outcomes in subjects with coronary artery disease. Dr. Humphries is currently investigating the treatment and outcomes of patients with chest pain, but angiographically normal coronaries. Dr. Humphries is also the inaugural Scientific Director of the BC Centre for Improved Cardiovascular Health (ICVH). In this role, she is committed to improving health outcomes for British Columbians at risk for, or living with, cardiovascular disease by generating and applying new evidence to improve the delivery of cardiovascular care in the province.

  • Associate Professor, Division of Cardiology, UBC
  • Scientific Director, B.C. Centre for Improved Cardiovascular Health

Sandra Jenneson

  • Clinical Instructor, UBC Department of Emergency Medicine

Takahisa Kawano

Dr. Takahisa Kawano is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Emergency Physician at the University of Fukui in Japan. He completed a post-doctoral fellowship within the BC Resuscitation Research unit. His primary area of academic interest is in out-of-hospital cardiac arrest and in applying novel statistical techniques to answer clinically needed questions. He has collaborated with BC Investigators on multiple projects, investigating the best treatments for
cardiac arrest.

  • Assistant Professor, Department of Emergency Physician, University of Fukui Japan

Calvin Kuo

Dr. Kuo obtained his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science from the California Institute of Technology, and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University. He was then a Killam Postdoctoral Scholar working with Jean-Sébastien Blouin in Kinesiology and Dinesh Pai in Computer Science at UBC. Calvin is broadly interested in sensing human motion and understanding how humans make sense of their own motion through a combination of wearable technologies and stochastic modeling approaches.

  • Assistant Professor, UBC School of Biomedical Engineering

Danny Liang

Dr. Liang is training in emergency medicine and has applied geographic modelling analyses to identify the optimal locations for AEDs in British Columbia.

Andrew MacPherson

Dr MacPherson works as an Emergency Physician and Regional Medical Director for BC Emergency Health Services, and engaged in prehospital and inter-faculty transport care for critical care patients.  Interests include mechanical CPR devices, engagement of first responders in care, and comprehending the patient journey in QI processes.

  • Clinical Professor, UBC Department of Emergency Medicine
  • Regional Medical Director, British Columbia Emergency Health Services
  • National Medical Director, Canadian Red Cross

Garth Meckler

Dr. Meckler has a strong interest in the prehospital emergency care of children and has chaired the Oregon EMS for Children Committee on Prehospital Education and developed a simulation-based education program for rural providers throughout the state. His research interests range from bedside clinical questions such as the management of pediatric headache to medical education and patient safety, and he is currently involved in a large National Institutes of Health grant to describe the epidemiology of prehospital safety events in the EMS care of children. Dr. Meckler has recently joined the Pediatric Emergency Research Canada network since arriving in Vancouver.

  • Division Head and Associate Professor, Division of Pediatric Emergency Medicine, BC Children’s Hospital

Nico Preston

Research focus: Data science, out-of-hospital research, technology, and innovation.

  • Director of Research and Innovation (Interim) British Columbia Emergency Health Services

Joseph Puyat

Dr. Puyat’s background includes training in social psychology, epidemiology, and health service research. He is research methodologist with the Center for Health Evaluation and Outcomes Sciences (CHÉOS), providing support with research study designs and quantitative data analysis to clinicians and other researchers. Dr. Puyat’s current research focuses on the use of big data analytics and linked, large health administrative databases to examine the treatment and quality gaps in mental health. In 2016, he completed his Ph.D. at the School of Population and Public Health at UBC, supported by a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Banting and Best Canada Graduate Scholarship and a UBC Four-Year Doctoral Fellowship.

  • Assistant Professor, UBC School of Population and Public Health

Frank Scheuermeyer

Dr. Scheuermeyer completed medical school at the University of Alberta, residency training at the University of British Columbia, and is an emergency physician at St. Paul’s Hospital and Mount St. Joseph’s Hospital. He collaborates with cardiologists and radiologists to study safe and efficient management of emergency department patients with acute chest pain and cardiac arrhythmias. He is also interested in patients with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. He works with addictions and public health specialists to investigate prehospital and emergency treatment of patients with substance use issues. He serves on the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians Research Committee, reviews many medical journals, and is a member of the editorial board of Annals of Emergency Medicine.

  • Clinical Associate Professor, Department of Emergency Medicine, UBC
  • Interim Research Director, Department of Emergency Medicine, UBC
  • Director of Research, St Paul’s Hospital Emergency Department

Mypinder Sekhon

Dr. Sekhon is an intensive care physician and neurointensivist in the intensive care unit at Vancouver General Hospital. He is currently a clinical instructor in the Division of Critical Care Medicine and Department of Medicine at the University of British Columbia. He completed his medical school training, internal medicine residency and critical care medicine subspecialty fellowship at the University of British Columbia prior to completing a neurocritical care fellowship at Addenbrooke’s Hospital at the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom under the guidance of Professors David Menon and Arun Gupta. His clinical and research interests include multimodal neuromonitoring, cerebral autoregulation disturbance after brain injury and critical care management of severe traumatic brain injury patients.

  • Intensive Care Physician Vancouver General Hospital
  • Clinical Assistant Professor, UBC Division of Critical Care Medicine and Department of Medicine

Babak Shadgan

Dr. Babak Shadgan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Orthopaedics and an Associate faculty member in the School of Biomedical Engineering at the University of British Columbia. He is directing the Clinical Biophotonics Laboratory at the International Collaboration on Repair Discoveries. Dr. Shadgan’s research interest is focused on design and development of novel wearable and implantable biosensors and their applications in health and diseases.

  • Assistant Professor, UBC Department of Orthopaedics
  • Associate faculty UBC School of Biomedical Engineering

Ron Straight – In Memoriam

Our RESURECT team is deeply saddened by the sudden death of Ron Straight. Ron began his career as a paramedic in 1979, held multiple positions with the BC Emergency Health Services as an Advanced Care Paramedic and was much loved teacher and mentor.

Ron specialized in prehospital care, acute scene injury management in sport, ACLS, ATLS, aquatic lifesaving and wilderness emergency care. He had a Master’s in Education and was an incredibly positive and encouraging instructor, loved by all his students. Ron led the transformation and teaching of newer concepts in CPR to all Paramedics and First Responders in 2006 and continued to contribute to the Resuscitation Outcomes Consortium and the Canadian Resuscitation Outcomes Consortium.  He was integral to the success of the FRONTIER Trial as the lead instructor and spent countless hours encouraging paramedics throughout the trial. More importantly he was a good friend.

  • BC CanROC EMS Research Liaison/Educator/Coordinator
  • FRONTIER Trial Paramedic Expert

John Tallon

Dr. John M Tallon is currently the Co-Head of the Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of British Columbia. He has recently finished his term as Chief Medical Officer with the British Columbia Emergency Health Services/Provincial Health Services Authority.  (August 28, 2020). He has extensive experience in working with and leading multidisciplinary health care teams in different health care regions and authorities within British Columbia, other provinces and nationally. He is currently appointed clinical professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at UBC. He is also appointed as adjunct professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine, Dalhousie University with cross appointments as adjunct professor in the Departments of Surgery, Anaesthesia and Community Health and Epidemiology at Dalhousie University. His health systems research interests include injury control, injury prevention, trauma and Emergency Medical Services systems as well as health care systems and accreditation. His clinical research interests include resuscitative airway management and head injury.

  • Co-Head of the Department of Emergency Medicine, University of British Columbia

Brian Twaites

  • Advanced Life Support Paramedic, British Columbia Emergency Health Services

Nechelle Wall

As an Advanced Care Paramedic, Nechelle Wall currently holds the positions of Paramedic Practice Leader and Research Lead with the department of Clinical Governance and Professional Practice at BCEHS.Currently completing her master’s with Monash University, Nechelle is passionate about quality assurance, quality improvement and using clinical quality standards to drive improvements in patient care.

  • Paramedic Practice and Research Lead with the department of Clinical Governance and Professional Practice (CGPP), British Columbia Emergency Health services