It has been a huge summer of live music in and around the South West with what seems to be more festivals than ever before on the calendar. If you have been lucky enough to enjoy any of the many events taking place you may have seen Mark Fuszard and his event medical team, Omega Medical, on site providing care to those in their hour of need - and hopefully packaging them back up to return to the fun.

Hi Mark, please introduce yourself and tell us what you do.

Hi I’m Mark and I joined the local Ambulance service in 2000, became a Paramedic in 2004 and joined the team on the Cornwall Air Ambulance in 2006 where I remained until 2016 when I left to concentrate on my own local business - Omega Medical.

My business was set up to provide medical cover to a variety of events from Equestrian and Motor Cross events, where trauma is the main concern, to Music Festivals where we can look after tens of thousands of music revellers. The music festivals we cover cater for all age groups and music tastes up and down the West Country and our main aim is making sure that our clients customers are safe and looked after. We try our best to have little or no impact on the NHS services and this is done by making sure that our staff are adequately trained and qualified to help those people in their time of need and hopefully get them back partying and enjoying the music as soon as they have recovered.

Festival medicine is almost a speciality in its own right. I remember the first festival we covered, The Great Estate , a gathering of 5,000 people over 3 days at an amazing location near Truro. We had a team of around 15 medics over that weekend who were hand picked for their expertise which included Paramedics, Nurses, ECP’s and Medics. Kit wise we were geared up for almost anything possible from a minor wound to major trauma and god forbid a cardiac arrest. We had all bases covered - or we thought we did! Our first customer was a young child stung on the face by a bee and was screaming the place down. Once we had removed a small area of his face - by the way he had face paint and was looking like a Tiger, we managed to remove the sting and apply some antihistamine cream. We had no make up removal wipes so had to improvise - not professional! Our second customer was a lady in her early twenties who come running into the treatment unit and said - “Ive got an Emergency!” - my immediate thoughts were of carnage somewhere in the festival and immediately grabbed my response bag. She then said in a softer voice - “its a female emergency!” - I still hadn’t quite twigged as to what was happening when Patsy, one of our Nurses said “Mark, have we got any tampons” - we didn’t unfortunately - why would we? That weekend we dealt with around 70 incidents, none of serious concern to us but were, at the time, to these individuals - all of which got to enjoy the rest of the festival. We came in to this festival expecting to be dealing with a lot of drunks and people who had taken drugs and came prepared for such. I had never attended a festival before and this was a misconception that I had prior to this event. Over the 3 days we had one alcohol related incident (a lady who was far too “wobbly” to walk to her tent under her own steam - we kept her warm, sobered her up and reunited her with her friends a few hours later) zero drug related incidents. No Ambulances called so no impact on the local NHS - result!

Hasten to add from that day forward we carry make up cleaning wipes, tampons, sanitary pads and condoms in our treatment unit. Yep we even had a lady come in to the treatment unit asking if we had any condoms as she had met a lad she really liked and they had both arrived at the event unprepared. Festival medicine - its not what we first thought it would be!

Over my many years I have grown to like many music genres from Punk, Rock and Metal to reggae and Indy and everything in between. I now have a job working at Music Festivals and Concerts and I love it! This year alone I have been lucky enough to work at many gigs across the Southwest and have seen Kylie, Joss Stone, Madness, Stereophonics and the Wurzels to name just a few. All the artists have been amazing but what I have realised is there are so many not so well known bands and singers that are equally amazing. Kylie was great, and I expected her to be, but her support artist, Nina Nesbitt was awesome too. Equally the Stereophonics were fantastic and were supported by The Wind and the Wave - they were amazing! The Town of Cats at Tunes in Castle were superb - I’d never heard of them before - now a fan! Looe Live was a great event and Level 42 were on form as usual but on Sunday afternoon a rock band from the Torquay area, Sonic Kingdom, came on stage and rocked the place! - even tho there were only a handful watching compared to the headliners. My music collection has now grown!! My advice to anyone attending a festival is yes go watch the headlining acts but also listen to the ones you’ve never heard of - you may get to add some incredible bands and artists to your music collection - I have!

Music festivals are a place where people gather to have fun, have a few drinks, eat some awesome food and listen to some amazing live music. My job is to make sure they stay safe and are treated correctly if they become ill or are injured and if possible keep them partying!

More info: Omega Medical