I hope you all had a good Christmas and sent 2014 out with a bang. It's probably why I haven't gotten much work done over the past ten days.



However, it's time to get 2015 up and running and to do that here is the podcast that I recorded with Ian Roberts while we were at the FIA Medicine in Motorsport Summit in Doha. If you want to know more about what was discussed at the Summit itself, I've posted a summary here.

Ian and I sat down in a side room of the ASPETAR Orthopedic and Sports Medicine Hospital in Doha during the workshops and tour to record this podcast. It's about a half hour long and we cover a fair amount in that time. Here's a quick content outline.

1) Pre-event preparation
- Know the features of the location, particularly danger spots
- Make sure security knows how to recognise you and that you may come through at speed requiring rapid access to a given area

2) Teamwork, good communication and hazard awareness are as important as the clinical skills that we bring to a motorsport event

3) Ian and Allan use checklists!!!
- State of readiness checklist before leaving pit lane garage for car and equipment
- In car equipment and comms check once in pit lane
- Ian keeps his checklists on his phone

4) Ian and Allan use a constant stream of closed loop communication between them, in a check and response format, so that nothing is assumed or left to chance. Each knows what the other is thinking and planning to do.

5) 15G is the magic number to trigger the blue medical warning light on the body of the F1 car just in front of the cockpit. This threshold is set below the impact force that is expected to be survivable, though not necessarily without injury.

6) We go through a great, step by step description of what actions are happening inside the FIA Medical Car and what thoughts and plans are going through Ian's head when a crash occurs and the medical car is scrambled to the scene.

7) The role of the pre-race team medical exercise is not so much about showing off clinical skills as it is an opportunity to see how the team works together, iron out any kinks in understanding of the idiosyncrasies of the category of vehicle and to prime the team for a real incident.

About 14 minutes in to the podcast there is a brief interruption where two of the Summit organisers come in and take down a workshop banner, but ever the professionals, they are quiet as mice.

As always, comments are welcome below and if anyone has questions for Ian, I'll bounce them along to him.

Here's the podcast