Trustees Annual Report 2021
We entered 2021 still in the grip of the COVID pandemic which continued to directly impact our intensive care community and wider beneficiaries. Our National Emergency Critical Care Committee (NECCC) was active throughout the year most notably during the first few months of 2021 when we met weekly with members comprising front line clinicians, researchers, policy makers from NHS England and Improvement and other key stakeholders. NECCC was essential to advance and promote knowledge and we met weekly to help support the intensive care community as they battled a much harsher wave on top of winter pressures. As the year progressed and vaccination became more widespread COVID-19 became more manageable and so we paused our NECCC meetings first changing to fortnightly and then paused in Autumn until needed.
We are committed to ensuring that our renewed vision for the future of intensive care puts accountability for championing equality, diversity, and inclusion at the core of what we do. Despite the challenges of the past few years, we have seen countless examples of good practice and outstanding leadership. If we are not actively supporting and recognising the potential of every individual available to us, we are quite simply missing out.
After a turbulent year of COVID in 2020 we postponed SOA and so SOA21 was an even more important three day congress to meet colleagues and share knowledge. With the pandemic continuing to create a path of uncertainty well in to 2021 we took the strategic decision to hold the congress virtually and we were delighted to say that it was a great success. You can read more about it in the report below.
This year’s annual report looks a little different because we want to explicitly demonstrate our progress against our 5 year strategy as we are at the midpoint and we also wanted to set out exactly where we made strategic decisions to change our priorities in light of COVID-19. This report demonstrates how we maintained our alignment with our charitable objects and benefited the public while refocussing key elements of our strategy. In July we reached the halfway point of our strategy and during a break in lockdown between waves of COVID-19 we held an in person, socially distanced away day with Trustees, Council members, our special advisors and our staff.
The focus of the away day was to review the progress against our strategy and to horizon scan to develop a refreshed strategy and plan for 2022. We paused work on the strategy as further waves of COVID-19 hit the UK and restarted the work to refresh it in 2022.
As expected when the year came to a close, we once again made preparations to respond to another surge as the latest variant of COVID-19 took hold and so we reconvened our National Emergency Critical Care Committee (NECCC) which had been in operation for most of 2021.
We commend this year’s annual report to you.
Dr Stephen Webb Dr Sandy Mather
President Chief Executive
