Join our Society leaders as they reflect on their own routes into Society leadership, discuss the value of diverse experiences, and share why members from all professional backgrounds and experiences should consider putting themselves forward.
Chair:
Ema Swingwood
Speakers:
Sekina Bakare
Allaina Eden
Dr Bakare is currently an Advanced Trainee in Intensive Care Medicine and Anaesthesia in Northwest London. She graduated with Honours from the University of Bristol and commenced her career in the West Country before pursuing Specialty Training in Northwest London. As an elected member of the Trainee Advisory Group of the Intensive Care Society and leverages her expertise to contribute actively to the society's Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Working Group. She also holds the additional responsibility of serving as the EDI lead on the Editorial Board for GPCISv3.
Dr Bakare is deeply passionate about advancing Equity in Healthcare and Medical Education, with clinical interests spanning Major General Surgery and Transfer Medicine.
Allaina is the Physiotherapy Service Lead at Royal Papworth Hospital, Cambridge. She trained at the University of Hertfordshire, where she returned to complete her Masters in advanced physiotherapy in 2015. She has over 20 years’ experience as a Physiotherapist, with over 15 years in Intensive Care.
Allaina is the Physiotherapy PAG Deputy Chair, Association of Chartered Physiotherapists in Respiratory Care (ACPRC) Surgical Champion, ACPRC Editorial Board member, and chair of the UK ECMO Physiotherapy Network. She presents regularly at national conferences and has led and co-authored many publications including national guidelines, scoping reviews and case series.
Clinical interests include complex rehabilitation and respiratory care following cardiothoracic surgery, transplantation, and long-term patients on Mechanical Circulatory Support. Her areas of special interest are early rehabilitation, ECMO and physiotherapy, weaning from ventilation and lung ultrasound. She is passionate about raising the profile of all AHPs working in Intensive Care.
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.
