Late this past year (2023), the prehospital care community lost Dr. Judith Fisher (Figure 1), who sought little personal attention yet contributed monumentally to the fields of immediate (emergency) care, resuscitation, mass-gathering medicine, and travel medicine. She was an early member of the World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine (WADEM; Madison, Wisconsin USA) as well as a supporter of Prehospital and Disaster Medicine (PDM). Dr. Fisher served on and contributed to the PDM Editorial Board for more than three decades.
Figure 1. Dr. Judith Fisher.
Dr. Fisher was a founding member and one of the chairs of the British Association for Immediate Care (Ipswich, United Kingdom). She was also a founding member of the United Kingdom Resuscitation Council (London, United Kingdom). Dr. Fisher helped develop one of the original comprehensive man-made disaster courses following her witnessing a major mass-gathering disaster incident in England. Judith served several terms on the Board of Directors for WADEM and importantly was a primary organizer of multiple WADEM conferences and meetings. Her contributions to PDM were enormous with active participation on the Editorial Board and peer review of multiple manuscripts with reviewer suggestions that were always directed at helping authors improve their research.
Judith worked closely with Prof. Peter Safar and Asmund Laerdal (Laerdal Resuscitation Manikin) in the early years of resuscitation medicine and research to help develop original cardiopulmonary resuscitation/CPR, Basic Life Support, and Advanced Life Support courses which are now taught throughout the globe.
As an original member of WADEM, Judith was instrumental in working on and publishing standards for the development of emergency ambulance response protocols as well as instrumental in developing standards for emergency and disaster response education programs. Dr. Fisher was a leader developing and organizing the original concepts for medical disaster coordination and management. Her contributions to the concepts of disaster coordination led to the now common practice of disaster health planning that is used by health and civil service agencies throughout the world. Dr. Fisher presented academic work at numerous international meetings and WADEM Congresses. She published multiple scholarly articles in PDM and a variety of other academic journals. She is best known among her peers for her ability to organize British and international health and medical committees and was skilled in keeping these professional groups focused on their objectives with both productive and actionable outputs.
Dr. Fisher’s awareness of the world of the need for organized prehospital care began in the 1950s when she coincidentally came upon a major motorcycle road accident in England. Although she already had a developing general medicine career, her experience with the serious road accident moved Dr. Fisher to develop a passion for accident and emergency medicine. She also was a resident of England and, along with the entire nation, witnessed the 1989 Hillsborough fatal human crush disaster during a football match. Following the experience of observing the Hillsborough disaster, she expanded her interest to mass-gathering medicine and disaster prevention and response. During the beginning of publication of PDM, she was a dedicated supporter of scientific exploration of accident (prehospital) and disaster medicine. As the current Editor of PDM, I early discovered Judtih to be a mentor and a valuable advisor. Her dedication to research and publishing quality, honesty, and ethics were beyond reproach. Dr. Judith Fisher’s life-long contributions to improving health and medicine have been enormous. She has been a friend and supporter of many and helped advance the field of prehospital and disaster medicine in a number of ways that have and will help global humanity. Dr. Fisher will be missed, but each time an emergency or disaster occurs, her presence is still evident and felt by those of us who are fortunate to continue to serve and respond to the innumerable prehospital emergency and disaster victims around the world.
