DevelopingEM 2026 is confirmed for November 14-18, 2026 in beautiful Saint Lucia in the Caribbean.
Why Saint Lucia I hear you ask?!
Well because we have friends and colleagues there who have been trying to get DevelopingEM back to the region for years.
The wonderful Lisa Charles suggested a collaboration years ago and we are enormously grateful for her persistence and patience in finally getting DEM to Saint Lucia.
Lisa has presented on the development of emergency and critical care in Saint Lucia at 3 of our previous events and has helped coordinate, with DevelopingEM faculty, a range of teaching and system strengthening activities in Saint Lucia over the last decade.
With her support, DevelopingEM now has the support of the Saint Lucia Chief Medical Officer, the Saint Lucia Ministry of Health, and the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States to collaboratively organise another regional event where local and neighbouring clinicians share experiences and solutions with delegates from around the globe.
The conference returns with our proven plenary format and with a range of high-quality workshops over a 5 day period.
We hope those who already know us are pencilling the schedule into their diaries but for those of you who haven’t experienced a DEM lets reintroduce the concept.
DevelopingEM is a little venture Sanj Fernando, Lee Fineberg and myself started in 2011 and DevelopingEM 2026 will be our ninth event.
DevelopingEM Ltd is a not for profit venture with a unique financial model.
On average greater than 90 percent of our funding comes from the registration fees of attendees from privileged situations, often where there is individual access to substantial study leave funding.
This funding not only pays for the organisational aspects of each event but, with careful budgeting, it allows funding to be directed towards subsidising the attendance of clinicians from host nations and regions. In 2026 we are aiming to support the attendance of 60-70 St Lucian and regional Caribbean clinicians.
The absence of a requirement for medical industry funding gives us organisational independence and there is no influence from industry bodies on our ethos and direction.
We aim to hold a regular regional conference in a situation where emergency medicine is rapidly evolving.
The educational approach is centred on the provision of excellent clinical information aimed at the senior clinician allowing all attendees to take home clinical pearls to their next clinical shift.
The core conference has tracks focussing on Adult Emergency Medicine and Critical Care, Paediatric Emergency Medicine and Trauma Care.
These core tracks are teamed with sessions focussing on the development of emergency medicine globally as well as sessions determined by the host partners.
Alfred Health is our event management team.
The Alfred Emergency and Trauma Centre from Melbourne runs our trauma track, Stonybrook Health from New York organises the Adult Emergency Medicine track and McMaster Sick Kids in Ontario our Paediatric track.
Along with our plenary sessions we will be collaboratively running a range of workshops including
- Advanced Ultrasound
- Paeds BASIC
- ECG Interpretation
- Radiology Intepretation
- EMS Management
- Emergency Nursing
DevelopingEM 2026 will be our ninth event with previous events in Sydney, Cuba (twice), Brazil, Sri Lanka, Fiji, Colombia and Darwin.
Over that time we have sponsored the attendance of over 700 regional clinicians who, depending on the setting, have paid anything from zero to ten percent of the registration fees of an international delegate. Regional delegates have also received accommodation and travel assistance.
The last 4 conferences have seen this delegate support become a much more organised venture with local and regional delegates not only mostly funded from a registration point of view but also receiving accommodation and travel assistance.
We remain very proud of this aspect of DevelopingEM.
One of the other achievements, which was less anticipated, were the longer-term effects of a broad range of clinicians coming together.
The opportunity that the events have provided for like-minded people to meet has resulted in lasting relationships that have resulted in long standing benefits across the regions where the conferences have been held.
Some examples include recurrent paediatric, ultrasound and trauma workshops across the Caribbean, increased connectivity between regional clinicians with mentors and educators in Australia and the USA, and ongoing mentoring of prehospital practitioners in Sri Lanka.
The benefits have certainly not been unidirectional, and we have been taught much by our regional colleagues.
Perhaps the most acute lesson is just how lucky we are here in Australia.
In Australia we are monumentally privileged in global terms to have the health care systems and working conditions that we enjoy.
Despite having a luxurious health care system, the explanation of the benefits of different systems from around the globe demonstrates that we also have much to learn about how to maximise the benefit of an emergency medicine system.
We have learnt how the Cuban system achieves the same health outcomes as Australia at one eighth of the cost.
We have seen how developing an emergency system from the ground up in Sri Lanka allows that system to focus on patients with actual emergencies.
Just because we have it good doesn’t mean we can’t learn to be better, to be efficient and to be more focussed.
We have also been taught what it is actually like being an emergency clinician in a different system.
Emergency clinicians from around the globe have explained how they battle trauma, disease and illness in working conditions we can barely fathom, with enthusiasm and without complaint.
These experiential presentations have been a core of our conferences and it has been an absolute privilege to learn from wonderful clinicians from around the world.
Sanj, I and the entire team are really excited about the possibilities DevelopingEM 2026 St Lucia will hopefully bring.
We are also very enthused at the prospect of seeing you, our DevelopingEM family, again next year in Saint Lucia.
Come and join us for the best emergency and critical care conference of 2026.
See you in Saint Lucia!
