Professor Ian Machonochie awarded inaugral 2026 APEM PERUKI outstanding contribution to PEM award.

Ian is one of leading forces in the development of PEM in UK.  In 2000 as a single handed consultant at St Mary's he pioneered the opening of the UK's first dedicated children’s ED. Running a service with dedicated paediatric trainees (RMOs) that paved way for grid training.

He helped establish APEM and was a founding figure in PERUKI; becoming the first Professor of Practice in Paediatric Emergency Medicine in the UK. His academic contribution encompasses hundreds of scientific publications, book chapters and guidelines, alongside the supervision and mentorship of generations of clinicians and early-career researchers. He has enticed many clinicians into PEM and nurtured so many of us with kind, calm, wisdom… and projects!

He continues to seek ways to improve the speciality, and the care children and their families receive.  He influences policy nationally and shares learning internationally to raise standards of PEM. Through leadership roles within the European Resuscitation Council and ILCOR, among many others, Ian has helped shape how acutely ill and injured children are treated internationally.  

He has never stopped looking for the next practical way to improve care. His recent work supporting paediatric expertise within NHS 111 is characteristic of this: identifying where children and families could receive better care and then working to make that happen. He has been integral to development of PEM standards, he challenges us to be evidenced-based in our day to day practice and is always seeking ways to use data across systems beyond the PED walls to improve families’ access to right care.

Ian’s list of titles, committees and achievements is impressive, but it does not quite capture his contribution. Ian has always been extraordinarily generous with his time, encouragement and opportunities. So, his legacy is also in the people he has supported, the collaborations he has created, and the specialty he has helped build. He has given us a thriving specialty, still growing and pioneering, grounded in research and evidence building - through his own work and in encouraging and supporting so many of us to bring our best selves to PEM.

Ian loves cricket, opera, Leeds united, the chemical brothers, bringing friends and colleagues together.  

Few people have contributed so consistently, and over such a long period, to the development of Paediatric Emergency Medicine in the UK and internationally. It is particularly fitting for APEM and PERUKI – two organisations that Ian himself helped establish and nurture – to recognise that contribution with the 2026 PEM Recognition Award, and to name this award after him so we can all aspire to improve and cherish our speciality.