Dr Paul Atkinson is an Emergency Physician with a wide experience in the practice of Emergency Medicine and Trauma Care. His primary degrees are first class honours in physiology, and honours in medicine from The Queen's University of Belfast. His postgraduate training and higher specialist training in emergency medicine was completed in Belfast, Northern Ireland; Cambridge, England and Sydney, Australia. He is currently Director of Emergency Medicine Research at Saint John Regional Hospital in New Brunswick, Canada, and Associate Professor with the Faculty of Medicine, Dalhousie University. He is involved in the development of the specialty of emergency medicine at local, regional and national levels. His areas of special interest include physiological scoring in trauma and critical illness, emergency paediatrics, clinical decision rules, the use of acute assessment tools including chest pain management pathways, and emergency ultrasound in trauma and shock.