Col Ian Greaves was educated at the Manchester Grammar School and graduated from the University of Birmingham Medical School in 1986, training initially in general medicine. He joined the British Army in 1999 as a consultant in Emergency Medicine. He is a fellow of the Royal Colleges of Emergency Medicine, Physicians (London) and Surgeons of Edinburgh. Between 2008 and 2014 he was Defence Consultant Advisor in Emergency Medicine and clinical lead for Pre-hospital Care for the three Armed Services. He deployed to both Iraq and Afghanistan. Col Greaves was Honorary Surgeon to HM Queen Elizabeth II from 2011 to 2014 and was made Officer of the Order of St John in 2005. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and of the Royal Geographical Society and was made an honorary fellow of the Ambulance Services Institute in 2014 for services to pre-hospital medicine. Col Greaves holds a personal chair at the University of Teesside. He currently serves as Chief Medical Officer of the Order of St John and of St John Ambulance and as an examiner for the fellowships in Pre-hospital Emergency Medicine and Emergency Medicine and for postgraduate degrees in trauma at Queen Mary University of London. Col Greaves is the author or editor of textbooks on trauma, pre-hospital Care, major incident management and medical responses to terrorism and is editor of the journal Trauma. He is also a member of the Northern Region NHS Clinical Senate and has been actively involved in NHS clinical service provision reviews.