Inside Intensive Care: ICS AHP Capability Framework in practice

James Bruce

Clinical Occupational Therapist, University Hospitals Bristol and Weston NHSFT

James is an Occupational Therapist employed within the Intensive Care Unit at Bristol Royal Infirmary Hospital. He works as an ICU clinical specialist in a unique role focused on early rehabilitation, humanistic care, and rehabilitation education across the ICU team. He engages patients in early rehabilitation, screens rehabilitation needs, and delivers rehabilitation throughout the post ICU inpatient pathway.

James has a strong interest in upper limb dysfunction following critical illness, long term functional outcomes, and learning directly from patients to improve acute care practice. He is currently completing a research fellowship to strengthen his research pillar of practice.

He has co-authored the Occupational Therapy chapter for GPICS versions 2 and 3, and the GPICS Rehabilitation chapter version 3. He is an Intensive Care Society council member, deputy of learning in the ICS, associate editor for JICS,  a steering group member for the current JLA and ICS adult critical illness research prioritisations and a steering group member for the NCEPOD rehabilitation following critical illness study. He supported the development of the AHP Critical Care Professional Development Framework. He is the Chair of the ICS AHP Professional Advisory Group, co chairs the AHP Critical Care Network for the South West of England and deputy chair of the recent formation of the UK and Ireland OT ECMO network.

Sam Dean

Clinical Specialist Physiotherapist , Northern General Hospital, Sheffield

Sam currently works as a Clinical Specialist Physiotherapist for General Critical Care unit based at the Northern General Hospital in Sheffield, he has been in this role since 2020. Having 6 years experience working in critical care, which is his real passion. Sam has a specialist interest in supporting early rehabilitation after critical illness and educating others of the importance of this.

Dr Ema Swingwood OBE

Consultant Physiotherapist, University Hospitals Bristol and Weston NHS Foundation Trust

Ema is a Consultant Physiotherapist in Critical Care at University Hospitals Bristol and Weston NHS Foundation Trust. Her area of clinical expertise and interest is ventilation, weaning and complex airway clearance. She has lectured at International conferences over a number of years around these topics.

Her PhD work focused on the use of Mechanical Insufflation-Exsufflation in the intubated population which was funded through the NIHR Clinical Academic Research Fellowship pathway. Post-doctoral work continues to examine the role of airway clearance interventions in the ICU population, which includes recent development of a core outcome set. She is a current Senior Clinical Practitioner Research Award holder (2025-7).

Regarding research capacity and capability building, Ema is passionate about developing others. She is the current Adult Therapies and Division of Diagnostics and Therapies Research Lead.  Most recently she was a co-applicant on a successful NIHR Health and Care Professions Internship Programme for Southwest Central and lead applicant NIHR Undergraduate Internship Placement award.

Education contributions include the Physiotherapy programmes at the University of the West of England and University College London. She sits on the Intensive Care Society (ICS) Physiotherapy Professional Advisory Group (Deputy Chair) and Education Committee, she is the current Programme Director for the ICS annual congress (SOA) and Deputy Chair for Professional Affairs. 

: @emaroids1