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I am an ICU & Anaesthesia consultant and senior lecturer at the Royal London hospital and Queen Mary University London (QMUL) in East London. I run the Critical Care MSc at QMUL and am an associate editor of BJA Education. Of course, this year I have the extra privilege of being the Programme Director of the ICS SOA23!
After medical school, I started training to be a surgeon which I enjoyed. But after a couple of years, I realised that what I really wanted to do was to look after really sick people and was excited by how patients were cared for in an ICU with such a diverse and multi-professional team of clinical staff. As a result, I switched my training to anaesthesia and critical care and became a consultant in 2012 after completing my PhD.
Without sounding too corny, the most rewarding part is being able to care for patients who are very unwell and seeing them improve to being discharged from the ICU and hospital. Clearly, most of the care is delivered by our nurses, junior doctors and AHPs and I find interactions with the whole team one of the best parts of my job. I also really enjoy teaching and as the programme director of the critical care MSc at QMUL, I have been able to develop a programme to cater for a wide group of students and enjoy teaching, supervising and supporting them.
The biggest challenges I find are managing the bed pressures in the hospital and ensuring flow of patients in and out of critical care in a timely manner. I think this is something that is experienced in most hospitals and is relentless, taking a lot of time and thinking space of clinical and managerial staff.
I have organised many local educational events and run a Master’s programme in critical care which involves bringing together a lot of different strands. I have a huge respect for everything the Intensive Care Society and the individuals within it do for the specialty. This was a great opportunity for me to get involved and bring all that is good across the country into a meeting which everyone can enjoy and leave feeling educated, challenged and inspired. I also like a good party, so looking forward to the social events!
I enjoyed attending SOA22 in person and meeting old friends , I had definitely missed the personal face-to-face interaction during the pandemic. There were some outstanding sessions, to name a few, end-of-life plenary session organised by Aoife Abbey, the session on cardiology, and the Cauldron. I also really enjoyed Belfast and the social events.
I am very excited about SOA23 and the fantastic line up of sessions and speakers. I think everyone will enjoy this as much as, and if not more, than they have the previous ones!
Birmingham is a lovely venue with lively surrounds. The sessions will appeal to the whole multiprofessional team with speakers from across the various disciplines.
I am especially looking forward to the plenaries highlighting new knowledge about lungs, the future of work force, and rehabilitation. These will be hugely entertaining, educational and provocative. There will be some excellent talks from some of the up and coming researchers and clinicians, as well as the established ones and a few superstars!
I must also mention the three pre-congress courses run by brilliant enthusiasts who give up their time to teach. I’m especially excited about the airway and bronchoscopy course which brings a collaboration between the Society, Difficult Airway Society (DAS) and the Bronchoscopy for Intensive Care (BrIC) courses.
When I'm not working or helping to deliver SOA23 I enjoy running and mountain biking. in the forest which I am just getting back to doing after rupturing my Achilles last year. The kids also keep me busy and provide a lot of entertainment!