Held on Friday, 15 May 2026 at 6:30pm

Venue: Apothecaries' Hall, Black Friar's Lane, London EC4V 6EJ

Presenting Oceans and Battlefields: Trauma Care in Tomorrow's War (The Leslie Payne Memorial Lecture)

To be given by Col Paul Parker & Surgeon Cdr Jowan Penn Barwell

Col Parker will outline the tenets of 'Run, Hide, Fight' as the basis of trauma care on tomorrrows contested battlefield. He will outline how drones have completely altered the face of trauma care on the battlefield. He will cover the need for at-risk upskilling of non-physician medics to debride, stabilise, fasciotomise and pack the abdomen or pelvis at reach aided by a paired non-physician provider delivering single-syringe anaesthesia.

Colonel Paul Parker is a Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon. He is the British Army's most senior Consultant Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgeon, and has a busy NHS practice at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, England, the UK's largest level 1 trauma centre. With over 15 operational tours: He has deployed to; Northern Ireland. Bosnia, Kosovo. Sierra Leone, Iraq, Afghanistan, Mali, Djibouti, Syria and NW Pakistan. He is Senior Lecturer in Special Operations Medicine at University College Cork and has authored over 90 highly relevant papers on trauma resuscitation, drones, abdominal/junctional tourniquets and surgery in austere and remote locations.

Surg Cdr Jowan Penn-Barwell is a Royal Navy Commando and Consultant Orthopaedic Trauma Surgeon, with an honorary appointment in the Oxford Trauma Service where he has a major trauma practice and a specialist interest in pelvic fractures and limb reconstruction.

He has deployed globally on Land and at Sea in support of Commando, Special and Maritime forces and was led the RN’s Orthopaedic cadre for 4-years. His current deployment is as the Clinical Director for the RN’s four forward surgical resuscitation teams.

He a fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford University has edited two books, written multiple textbook chapters and over 40 peer-reviewed articles. His research interests include limb reconstruction, ballistic trauma and the performance of combat casualty care systems, he was awarded a PhD in 2018 and is s currently studying for his second MSc, Medical Education at Oxford University.

Surg Cdr Jowan Penn-Barwell will be outlining his analysis that survival after combat injury peaked during the counter insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan and will be lower in the next conflict. It is likely that with prolonged casualty evacuation resulting from restricted movements around the battlespace that casualty patterns surviving to treatment will more closely resemble the wars of the last century than those at the start of this one. Inherent delay will result in a natural triage resulting in the challenge of military surgery returning to what it always was - large numbers of casualties with extremity injuries in various degrees of wound and systemic sepsis.

The Faculty of Conflict & Catastrophe Medicine owes its existence to Dr. Leslie Payne, who died in 2018. He helped establish the Diploma in the Medical Care of Catastrophes (DMCC), which continues to be taught and examined at the Society of Apothecaries.

From the early 1970s, Leslie laboured long and hard as the Ballistic and Blast Archivist to the Department of Military Surgery at RAMC College Millbank. This unpaid work was carried out in addition to managing his busy dental practice. At the same time, he was discreetly advising UK security agencies. His areas of particular interest and expertise included blast biophysics and pathophysiology, as well as penetrating civilian and military ballistic injury.

Leslie was also a noted expert on stab injury and unarmed combat and worked closely with the London Metropolitan Police and the Association of Chief Police Officers of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland in these areas.