Maternal Critical Care

Anita Banerjee

Anita Banerjee FHEA, FRCP is an Obstetric Physician and Diabetes and Endocrinology Consultant. She is an Honorary Reader in Obstetric Medicine, at King’s College London and Deputy Director of Medical Education at Guys and St Thomas’ Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. She is the Secretary of the MacDonald Obstetric Medicine Society. She is one of the central physician assessors for the UK confidential maternal deaths enquiry. She has published articles, guidelines and book chapters on a wide variety of medical conditions in pregnancy. She is one of the leading authors of the RCP Acute Care Toolkit on managing acute medical problems in pregnancy.  She is on the steering committee for mMOET, Her main interests are high risk pregnancies and education.

Nicholas Barrett

Consultant Intensivist

Dr Nicholas Barrett is a consultant in critical care medicine at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust who trained in both anaesthesia and intensive care medicine at Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney Australia. He leads the ICU at Guy’s and St Thomas' and has particular interests in severe cardio-respiratory failure, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) and extracorporeal CO₂ removal (ECCO₂R), including its provision in pregnancy. He is a specialist advisor to NICE and HSIB. He is chair of EuroELSO, the organisation supporting the development of ECMO in Europe and provides advice to ECMO programmes around the world.

Virginia Beckett

Virginia Beckett is an Obstetrician & Gynaecologist with special interests in Maternal & Reproductive Medicine.  She has worked in Bradford, which has one of the UK’s busiest maternity units, since leaving London in 2000.

Virginia is on the working group for the Management of Medical and Obstetric Emergencies and Trauma (mMOET) course & is local course director. This role encouraged further enquiry into the causes of cardiac arrest in pregnancy, the findings of which were published in The British Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology in 2017. She has co-designed a model to teach perimortem caesarean section (PMCS) and has delivered teaching to a wide range of specialities, including high fidelity pre-hospital trauma simulation.  This has led to a change of practice by several pre-hospital services to include PMCS in the obstetric cardiac arrest algorithm. She has contributed to the new mMOET course and manual which launch in 2022.

Virginia is a media spokesperson for The Royal College of Obstetricians & Gynaecologists, commenting regularly in the press on issues with respect to O&G.   She edited ‘The Pregnancy Book’ for the Department of Health for many years and her book ‘My Pregnancy, a handbook for pregnancy’ has been published in several languages. 

Katie Cranfield

Consultant Intensivist and Obstetric Medicine , UK

Katie is an adopted Geordie having graduated in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and completing most of her training in the North East in Intensive Care, Anaesthesia and Obstetric Medicine. She is Consultant at the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle-upon-Tyne where she works in both Intensive Care and Obstetric Medicine. Katie has a particular interest in Obstetric Critical Care. She undertook RCP Obstetric Medicine credentialling at St Thomas’ Hospital in London in 2022. Having been involved in setting up the Maternal Medicine Network within the North East and North Cumbria Katie now works as lead Obstetric Physician within the Network. She is an MBRRACE-UK maternal mortality review assessor and an active member of the UK Obstetric Surveillance System (UKOSS) Steering Committee. Katie has been involved in the creation of a number of national guidelines and publications related to critically unwell obstetric patients and regularly teaches on this topic. Outside of work she loves to bake (complete with sticky fingers and copious sprinkles courtesy of her children), swim and spend time exploring the beautiful North East with her family.

: @CranfieldKatie

Deborah Horner

Consultant in Anaesthesia and Critical Care

Deborah Horner is a Consultant in Anaesthesia and Critical Care at Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Deputy Chief Medical Officer.

Her dual interests in Critical Care and Obstetric Anaesthesia have led to an interest in the provision of Enhanced and Critical Care for sick women in her own hospital, regionally and nationally. She is Yorkshire & the Humber Maternal and Enhanced Critical Care (MEaCC) steering group Chair, represents the OAA on the national MEWS working group and Chair of the Intensive Care Society Maternal Critical Care group.

She is married with 2 children and a very spoilt Labrador.

: @hornerdeborah1

Marian Knight

Marian Knight is Professor of Maternal and Child Population Health at the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit, Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford, UK. She is a public health physician and applied health researcher whose research focuses on the care and prevention of severe complications of pregnancy and early life and addressing disparities in outcomes for women and babies from different population groups.

She leads the MBRRACE-UK national Confidential Enquiries into Maternal Deaths and Morbidity and established and was inaugural chair of the International Network of Obstetric Survey Systems (INOSS) to conduct international collaborative and comparative national studies of severe morbidities in pregnancy. In 2021 she received an International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics Recognition Award to honour highly distinguished people outside the obstetrics and gynaecology profession who have performed an exceptional service to women’s health.

Stephen Lapinsky

Stephen Lapinsky is a Pulmonary and Critical Care physician at Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto and Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto.  He trained in Internal Medicine and Pulmonary/Critical Care Medicine in Johannesburg, and since 1994 he has been on staff at Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto. He was Director of the Intensive Care Unit from 2004 to 2020. His clinical and research interests are in critical illness and pulmonary diseases in the pregnant patient. He has published more than 50 research papers, reviews, editorials and book chapters in this field. He is co-Editor-in-Chief for the journal Obstetric Medicine, and Vice-President of the North American Society for Obstetric Medicine (NASOM).

Segun Olusanya

Consultant Intensivist

Segun is a newly appointed Intensive Care Consultant at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London, with special interests in extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), clinician wellbeing, point of care ultrasound, equality/diversity/inclusion, and online education. His real claim to fame is running an award winning wedding cake and confectionery business with his wife, Fehintola; he primarily functions as Chief Taster, and occasional Dish Washer.

: @iceman_ex

Andrew Slack

Dr Andrew Slack qualified from St Bartholomew's and the Royal London School of Medicine and Dentistry in 1998. He trained in internal medicine, nephrology and intensive care and completed an MD (Res) at King’s College London with the clinical research, focused on liver and kidney dysfunction, undertaken on the liver intensive care, King’s college hospital. He also completed an ICU fellowship in trauma and neurosurgery at Sunnybrook, Toronto, Canada. His interest include post ICU recovery and critical illness in pregnancy. He is the critical care maternity lead at Guy’s and St Thomas’s Hospital.

Dan Taylor

Dr Dan Taylor is a consultant in Critical Care and ECMO at Guy's & St. Thomas' Hospital where high-risk obstetrics and ECMO are co-located. He works closely with maternal medicine and obstetric colleagues in the management of patients with complex perinatal needs where extracorporeal support may be required. He has interests in severe cardiac and respiratory failure and ECMO simulation, and is the departmental End of Life and Learning from Deaths lead. 

Brian Wilkinson

Brian is a Consultant in Anaesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine with interests in Human Factors and Education. He believes that Intensive Care makes the biggest difference when presented with the opportunity to offer lifesaving intervention to people without significant co-morbidity with the reserve to bounce back to their pre-existing level of function. This describes the obstetric population well, and the difference between an amazing outcome, and motherless children is a stark one. Unfortunately, we know from MBBRACE-UK and HSIB reports that the care unwell pregnant and recently-pregnant women receive is often suboptimal, with delays in escalation being a common feature. It’s quite clear that this isn’t a problem for Intensive Care to solve alone, and simply moving women to ICU would cause significant challenges, particularly during labour. Nonetheless, Brian firmly believes that Intensive Care has a key role to play in improving the care that unwell women receive, regardless of their location in the hospital.  Brian is quoted as saying ‘if I had £1 to spend in healthcare, I doubt you’d get more bang for your buck anywhere than improving the care of unwell pregnant and recently-pregnant people.’ Outside work, Brian lives in West Yorkshire with his family, enjoying Yorkshire country walks and playing cricket to a very poor standard!

Nicky Witton

Senior Lecturer Critical Care, UK

Nicky is a Senior Lecturer at Keele University who started her career in Critical Care in the late 1980s in the Midlands on a general Intensive Care Unit, before combining with the Cardiac ITU in early 2000. During this time, she completed her post registration Intensive Care course for adults, BSc (HONS) Nursing Studies and Post Graduate Diploma in Education. In clinical practice, she had special interest in advanced life support, obstetrics and paediatrics. Nicky completed her shortened course in Intensive Care for Children at Great Ormond Street.

Moving into higher education in 2008, Nicky has developed the post registration programmes in Critical Care, and Advanced Critical Care Practitioner (ACCP), and acute care for midwives. Remaining passionate about critical care education, Nicky works with the Critical Care National Nurse Leads (CC3N) and the Education Forum, working collaboratively in developing the National Standards for Adult Critical Care Education and the associated clinical competencies Steps 1,2,3,4, and bespoke competencies relating to cardiac and obstetrics. She was also part of the team developing the educational framework for Nursing Associates in Critical Care.  

In 2020, continuing with apprenticeship development, Nicky was part of the national trailblazer group for the Enhanced Clinical Practitioner standard and has since developed the Enhanced Clinical Practitioner BSc and Post Graduate Diploma for a wide range of healthcare practitioners commencing in September 2022, one of the first HEIs to deliver this standard. This includes routes for Critical Care and neonatal nurses. 

Nicky is a Senior Fellow with the Higher Education Academy. Nicky’s research and publications focus on Moral Distress, the critical care work environment and curriculum design. She is currently undertaking her Doctorate in Education with a focus on Critical Care nurses’ longevity in clinical practice.