Speakers
Rebekah Haylett
Professor Sarah Wallace OBE
Abstracts
At the Intensive Care Society, we recognise that critical care is a team sport—and that the power of a truly multi-professional approach is greater than the sum of its parts. While we celebrate the collective strength of our teams, we also value the individual stories, innovations, and perspectives that can shape practice and improve patient care.
This year, we invited all members of the multi-professional intensive care team to submit abstracts on themes including:
· Quality improvement
· Multi-professional collaboration
· Innovations in clinical practice
· Workforce and wellbeing
· Controversies in intensive care
· Bold ideas that could change the way we work
The top six abstracts have been selected for live presentation in this session, where presenters will share their work and respond to questions from judges and the audience.
The winning abstract and presenter will be announced during the SOA25 Closing Plenary on Thursday 3 July 2025.
Chair/Judge of the session: Rebeka Haylett
Judges: Sarah Wallace and Sarah Burgess
Abstract presenters:
1. Bridget Riley: Improving neuro-prognostication after cardiac arrest at University Hospitals of North Midlands.
2. Sandra Stirzaker, Charlotte Quilliam, Georgina Linstead: S.P.E.A.K - a critical care tale of an in-line one-way speech valve
3. Caitlin Kiddy: Harnessing the impact of psychology: Showcasing psychological excellence across North West London intensive care units.
4. Justin Kirk-Bayley: A simple giving set switch saves substantial money, stops IV fluid creep and scales down plastic waste.
5. Charmaine Buss: Enhancing family-centered care: The development and expansion of the family liaison nurse role in adult critical care.
6. Nicholas Ambler: Shining a Light on Follow-Up After ICU.
Sarah Wallace OBE FRCSLT is a Consultant Speech and Language Therapist (SLT) at Wythenshawe Hospital in Manchester and honorary senior lecturer at the University of Manchester. She specialises in Critical Care and has over 30 years of clinical experience as an SLT. After training in Manchester, Sarah has worked in hospitals and Non-Government Organisations in the UK, Singapore, Grenada (WI) and Cambodia. Whilst working clinically in cardiothoracic, ECMO and general critical care in Manchester, she also teaches and conducts research internationally, focussing on laryngeal injury, dysphagia and communication issues post intubation and tracheostomy. She has over 60 publications, several top cited articles winning awards from the BMJ and the ICS. She holds expert advisor roles with the Intensive Care Society (ICS), the National Tracheostomy Safety Project and the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists (RCSLT) and has contributed to many policies, guidelines and initiatives including GPICS, FEES, NCEPOD and the ICS National Rehabilitation Collaborative. Sarah is also an Associate Editor for JICS. She has pioneered new treatments for laryngeal recovery in ICU, setting up the first FEES service in Asia and the UK and supports SLT service development in the UK, Sweden and Chile.
Sarah grew up in the West Country and qualified from the University of Cambridge in 2012. She decided that critical care was for her after watching a registrar do an RSI on a general medical ward and deciding this was the coolest thing ever! She has worked in Lancashire, Cambridgeshire, the West Midlands and London where she currently works as dual trainee in anaesthesia and ICM (she no longer approves of intubating patients on medical wards...) She was elected to the ICS Trainee Advisory Group in late 2020, where she works for the education team.