Issuu

Edition four | December 2023

Your Society Update

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Your Society Update

Edition four | December 2023

A look back at 2023 with our CEO, Sandy Mather and President, Steve Mathieu

With the end of 2023 in sight, we can now look back on the year we shared and contemplate what next year will bring for the Intensive Care Society. First of all, and most importantly, we can’t express enough how grateful we are to each of you for the compassion, and dedication you bring to your work and to the Society as well. 2023 has been a tough year for us all. We have seen significant operational and financial pressures in the NHS which impacts on our ability to deliver the quality care we all expect to deliver. At times many of us have found it difficult to maintain our own wellbeing, and some of the challenges we continue to face have tested our commitment. But we know that as ever your patients have always been your priority. Whilst you care for your patients we are also here to listen, care for and to support you. We want to work hand in hand with you to build an intensive care fit for the future and that we can all be proud of. We continue to educate parliamentarians through our All-Party Parliamentary Group to help them better understand the practice and importance of intensive care and importantly your value, your professionalism, your brilliance. Each of these meetings has seen representation from our elected members of Council and Professional Advisory Groups ensuring all professions within our community have their voices heard. We have this week submitted our 60 page statement to the chair of the Covid-19 inquiry to ensure that the impact of the pandemic on intensive care services, our teams and our patients is recorded accurately in history. We are incredibly proud to have this responsibility and will not let you down. When we return in the new year we have lots of important work to get stuck into. We’ll be planning to welcome you to Liverpool for State of the Art 2024 (17-20 June), continuing our EDI and sustainability work, supporting education, ultrasound accreditation (FUSIC™), research and hosting our third Leadership Programme cohort, LeaP3. We’ll be continuing to work towards achieving our new strategy. We’ve already made a great deal of progress, but there is still much to do and we’re looking forward to getting started on another year of important work with you and on your behalf. The Society only thrives thanks to your collective contributions which help us take the big steps we need to advance intensive care for our members. We thank you again for all you do and your endless support for the Society – we are nothing without our members. We wish you all a very merry Christmas, and a safe and happy new year. We can’t wait to work with each and every one of you in 2024.

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Your Society Update

Edition four | December 2023

Sustainability in 2023 Throughout 2023 our Sustainability Working Group have been busy on projects advancing environmental sustainability in our specialty and at the Society. As a critical enabler of our 2023-27 strategy, we’ve been embedding sustainability in everything we do. At our State of the Art Congress in June our Chief Executive, Sandy Mather, declared the climate emergency a health emergency as part of her opening address to delegates. We joined many of our fellow members of the UK Health Alliance on Climate Change (UKHACC) in making this declaration, which we believe is important for framing the way climate change is understood.

“As a Society, we advocate for the best interests of intensive care staff and patients, and it is clear that planetary health is a key pillar of population health. We want to ensure we represent the values of our members and the patients they care for, which is why we’ve made environmental sustainability a critical enabler for the successful delivery of our new strategy.” – Sandy Mather, Chief Executive, Intensive Care Society This year we also launched our Gloves Off in Critical Care campaign, encouraging all those in our community to only use gloves when it’s necessary. Our campaign was a great success, with many units adopting the posters and beginning to change their behaviour. We also produced an implementation guide, to help hospitals and Trusts successfully make an important sustainability change. As part of our ongoing work to engage our community on sustainability we continued to team up with the British Association of Critical Care Nurses (BACCN) and the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare (CSH) to host bi-monthly sharing hours. Our most recent event featured Jennie Wilson, former President of the Infection Prevention Society, Sam Clark, of our Sustainability Working Group, and Graham Pike, of the Infection Prevention Society, and focused on the use of gloves in critical care. The event drew more than 100 registrations and covered some excellent key information for attendees. We’ve also been putting one of our four core values, collaboration, into practice, on some exciting projects with some of our peers. We’ve got plenty on the horizon for 2024 and are looking forward to sharing more in the new year. In December we launched our Carbon Footprint Report for 2022, which outlines the environmental impact we had last year. It covers the running of our office, and the footprint of our staff team both working from home and commuting into our London office. In our 2023-27 Strategy we committed to reducing our carbon footprint by 50% by 2030, and this is the first measurement we’ve undertaken. We plan to repeat this process each year so we’re able to monitor our progress and make the reductions we need to. You can read more about our report on the next page. To round our sustainability work for the year we had some excellent news in September with the election of our Chief Executive, Sandy Mather to the Board of Trustees of UKHACC! We were thrilled to have her leadership in this space recognised with her election, and are looking forward to continuing our work with UKHACC in 2024.

“I’m so glad to have been elected as a Trustee of UKHACC. At the Intensive Care Society, we’re proud to be a sustainability leader in our field and to have delivered so much progress for our members, and I’m looking forward to bringing all we’ve learnt so far to this position. We’ve already accomplished so much while part of UKHACC, but there is still much to do, and I’m looking forward to all we can achieve in the coming years.” – Sandy Mather, Chief Executive, Intensive Care Society You can find out more about our work this year, and how you can get involved at ics.ac.uk/sustainability.

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Edition four | December 2023

Your Society Update

Our Carbon Footprint We’re thrilled to have released our report on our 2022 carbon footprint, outlining the environmental impact of all our activities for the year. Since 2021 we have been working hard to facilitate sustainable change within intensive care. We have provided guidance on sustainable practice, have been working closely with our community to change behaviour relating to the use of PPE, and have begun to collaborate internationally on a sustainability guidance package for critical care. However, while much of our sustainability work is about helping critical care units minimise the environmental impact of their work, it is important that we also take steps to minimise our own. Last year we released Your Society – Our Strategy – 2023-2027, which identified environmental sustainability as a critical enabler of all our work. As a result, we made a commitment to reduce our carbon footprint by 50% by 2030, and to do this we needed to begin by establishing a baseline to work from. We’ve measured our footprint using Government guidance and tools available to organisations like ours, and accounted for our regular activities, the running of our office in London, and the impact of our staff both commuting and working from home. In 2022 our total carbon emissions were 84.79 tonnes. Our report breaks these emissions down into their Scope and how they were created. It also identifies areas where we may be able to make reductions now to help us meet our target in 2030. We haven’t calculated the footprint of our annual State of the Art (SOA) Congress as part of our report on 2022, but we’ll be producing a similar document each year, and will begin reporting on SOA as part of our 2024 edition. We hope this report shows our members how seriously we take our sustainability work, and helps other organisations like ours consider their own carbon footprints and how they can shrink them. You can find the full report at ics.ac.uk/sustainability.

Not shown - Scope 1 emissions - 0 tonnes Not shown - Scope 2 - Electricity - 0.01 tonnes - Scope 3 - Business travel - 9.87 tonnes - Scope 3 - Transportation and distribution - 0.56 tonnes - Scope 3 - Purchased goods and services - 68 tonnes - Staff working from home - 4.76 tonnes - Staff commuting into London - 1.53 tonnes

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Your Society Update

Edition four | December 2023

Our Year in Review

It’s been another busy year for our Communications team, working with our colleagues and members to grow the profile of our work. 2023 has been another interesting year full of exciting projects and work to increase the public’s understanding of our community’s work. There’s been a lot happening, with a couple of notable highlights along the way. Our podcasts and blogs This year we reinstated regular podcast episodes and blogs. We invited members of our Professional Advisory Groups (PAGS) to join us, and celebrated events like Black History Month and the publication in JICS of an article about the care of transgender patients in ICU. We also invited our PAGs to write for our blogs, providing a platform for sharing insights and their goals and work for the year. You can find all our podcasts and blog articles on our website. Celebrating you Every June we celebrate Intensive Care Week, showcasing the work you and your teams do every day in ICU. 2023 was our biggest year so far, as so many of you sent us your pictures, celebrated with your teams, and ordered our downloaded our Intensive Care Week packs. We sent celebration packs to more than 150 units across the UK but didn’t get an invite to a single morning tea! It was a privilege to help you mark the occasion with your colleagues, and we can’t wait to do it all again next year! In 2024 Intensive Care Week will be celebrated from 3-9 June, so mark your calendars! We also held our third annual Intensive Care Society Awards ceremony, recognising some exceptional work nominated by you. You can read more about our Awards on page 12. COVID-19 Inquiry In May this year we received a Rule 9 request from the Chair of the COVID-19 Inquiry instructing us to provide evidence and a witness statement setting out our role during COVID-19 between March 2020 and June 2022. We are pleased to be able to represent our multi-professional membership at the Inquiry and we have also made sure that we reflect the combined efforts of the intensive care community to support the entire country and colleagues globally, for example during our National Emergency Critical Care Committee meetings, our knowledge sharing webinars and as part of our writing groups for our guidance development. We have been worked with our legal team to compile our 60 page evidence statement, which we have recently submitted to the Inquiry. If we are called to give oral evidence, we expect this to be in Autumn 2024 when Module 3 starts. We will keep you updated on next steps. Our APPG Our All-Party Parliamentary Group on Intensive Care continues to be a positive forum for us to continue to educate and inform Parliamentarians about the issues that matter to you – notably in 2023 this was workforce: recruitment, retention, training and CPD across the professions. Find out more about the APPG and its members at ics.ac.uk/appg

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LIVERPOOL ACC 18-20 JUNE 2024 See you at #SOA24

Your Society Update

Edition four | October 2023

Digital Developments for 2023 It’s been a big year of enhancing member experience just for you!

Just over a year ago we transitioned to new website and member platform, benefits of which include:The ability to view current membership status. Updating of your own personal details Viewing your event bookings for the past 6 years Paperless direct debits Targeted forms for all your enquiries This year, we have seen 990 new members join us, bringing our current membership number to 3,679, a growth in our total membership of over 300 members. You can also now sign up for payment of your subscriptions in minutes online via GoCardless - 267 new direct debits have been set up this year. We have continued to develop our systems and will shortly be introducing new features, including; Collecting more information as part of the joining process, including your profession, grades and job titles The ability for you to amend your place of work and job titles Enabling you to update your professional registration details We will also be bringing registrations for SOA24 in-house which will link your membership status to the purchase of your ticket, and we’ll also be managing the submission of all our Congress abstracts. We’ve got even more on the cards for 2024, and we can’t wait to share more with you!

Our SOA23 Have you booked your #SOA24 ticket yet? Join us at the UK’s largest multi-professional Congress and second in Europe, for three days of learning, networking and fun. With only 26 weeks left until SOA24 heads to the ACC Liverpool, 18 – 20 June 2024, now is the time to get booking if you haven’t already. Other the past couple of months, we have been working hard to build you a programme that delivers all of your CPD needs. With 26 sessions including three plenaries being delivered through three concurrent streams across the three days, you are guaranteed to have more content that you can keep up with. Don’t worry though as every SOA ticket comes with six months of on demand access, so you can go back and catch up with all the content you missed. SOA’s renowned networking programme provides you with an abundance of opportunities to catch up with your colleagues and friends, as well as make some new ones along the way. We also have a great wellness agenda planned for you which includes our 5K fun run.

Watch why you should join us for SOA24

The deadline for submitting your abstract in one or more of our categories available is fast approaching. If you want to present your work to a global audience, make sure you get your submission in by 8 January 2024. More details will be coming soon, so keep an eye on your inbox and across our socials to keep up-to-date on all things #SOA24. Head to ics.ac.uk/soa for more! https://bit.ly/whyjoinforSOA24

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Newsletter name Your Society Update

Editionfour one| |October March 2023 Edition 2023

Infectious Disease and Antimicrobial Stewardship Join us on 29 February online or in person to explore the threat of resistant infections

Learn all about the psychology, pharmacy and microbiology of antimicrobial stewardship

Supported by

2023 for our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Working Group In case you missed it, in October this year we published our much anticipated Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) report, Towards an Inclusive Future – A look Inside Our Community. The report was prepared by our EDI working group led by Chair, Aoife Abbey. It was compiled based on survey data collected from members of the intensive care community over a six month period in 2022, and represents more than 18 months of work analysing that data to form a broad picture. When our working group first met, we were mindful that ‘deeds not words’ was what we wanted to be recognised for. With such a broad range of issues needing our attention and no data to support our work, finding that starting line and figuring out where we could and should make a difference was a daunting task. We knew that we needed to understand more about our community to frame a roadmap, so our ‘EDI workforce census’ was born. When it comes to cultivating inclusion there can be no end to the work, but there must be a beginning, and this exercise has made that start. These testimonies are just a fraction of our immense workforce, and yet this work still represents the largest and most expansive project of its kind carried out in our multi-professional community to date. More importantly, irrespective of the denominator, we believe each of the voices and therefore their experiences shared not only ‘count’, but also represent a learning opportunity for both the Society and the teams we work with each day. The future of Intensive Care in the UK is bright, but if we accept our failings, really listen, and take responsibility for being better, it can be dazzling. You can read the full report at ics.ac.uk/edi

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Towards an Inclusive Future A look inside our community

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Your Society Update

Edition four | December 2023

Our Year in Review Our Learning team has had a busy, though highly productive year. Since January 2023, more than 1324 members & non-members have registered on a FUSIC accreditation pathway. FUSIC Heart and Lung continue to be in high demand. Although the Abdomen, DVT and Vascular modules have far fewer candidates enrolling each year, newer specialist areas of accreditation are slowly gaining traction. As a result, the Learning team receive many more enquiries on CACTUS, fTOE and FUSIC HD. Our Learning team has seen the number of people actively engaging with FUSIC’s online interactive content grow steadily from 364 in June 2023, to 914 in October 2023. Despite our Learning team being a few team members short, our Digital Learning Manager was able to effectively spin lots of plates together with the Head of Communications. As a result, lots of amazing things got done. These projects include: The categorisation of the Learning Portal content, which makes it much easier for members to navigate their way around the large amount of educational content that is made available as part of your membership benefits. There is still a little more work to be done here, and we’ll be completing this in 2024. SOA21, SOA22 & SOA23 content was made available in the Learning Portal for our members The completion of the first interactive module for the New(ish) CACTUS Lung accreditation, which was officially launched in May 2023 Further improvements to the interactive modules for FUSIC Heart and Lung Editing many multiples of the wellness webinars and educational study days, then making them available to relevant parties via the Learning portal Our Learning team gained a new Head of CPD during the early part of September, who was quick and keen to get stuck right into all things learning, FUSIC and more. A few weeks later a new Education and Accreditation coordinator started, and the Digital Learning Manager breathed a sigh of relief as he became part of a fuller team once more. Another exciting point to mention is that 12 delegates sat the very first fTOE examination which ran on 23 November 2023, proving to be an important milestone in this joint accreditation pathway between the Society & the Association of Anaesthetists (AoA). To top things off, November 2023 saw the first meeting of the New FUSIC productive start!

Committee, with the newly recruited Leads getting off to an amazingly

Looking onward to 2024, there are lots of plans to develop new and improved systems and processes across the learning function, to introduce additional modules to the CACTUS accreditation, to run lots of interesting study days, and lots, lots more, so watch this space.

Our new FUSIC

National Leads

Antonia Rubino fTOE

Ashley Miller Hemodynamics (HD)

Hannah Conway Heart

Jennie Stephens Abdomen

Jonny Wilkinson DVT, Vascular and Regional Anaesthesia

Justin Kirk Bailey Lung

Manni Waraich Brain

Marcus Peck International and National Partnerships

Michael Griksaitis CACTUS

Prashant Parulekar Research and Evaluation

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Your Society Update Your Society Update

Edition Edition four four | December | December 2023 2023

Thriving at Work this year What another busy year for our Thriving at Work programme! Workplace wellbeing is not just for COVID-19, its for all of us for our whole working lives. We hope that what we have contributed this year has gone some way to help you and your intensive care to help you to thrive in the work that you do, and feel good about the job. Some of our highlights of this year have included our work with trainees- our trainee core conditions to thrive survey & our trainee wellbeing session. We learned through our survey that most of what trainees struggle with are at a systems level: inconsistencies in HR practices, pay, IT, parking. Getting the simple stuff right really does make a working life better for a doctor in training. We have had another great year of peer support training- training up another 100 people in the programme this year- and don’t forget you can access our centralised peer supporters via our Thriving at Work webpages. We’ve also run a number of other educational sessions- patient wellbeing, delirium, updates on staff psychological research, response after incident, and team wellbeing. All have been well received- thanks to those who attended. Its been a bumper year for our Team Immediate Meet tool- after launching in August 2022, we now have 150 sites worldwide signed up and utilising the tool. We also refreshed all of our written resources, and still have an archive of recorded webinars and podcasts still available. And key to team wellbeing is that they are well led- our Leadership Programme ran again this year- another fantastic cohort of staff went through our eight month bespoke programme. So what is your new years’ wellbeing resolution? Perhaps you might like to train to be a peer supporter? Booking is now open for one of our four events across the year. Or perhaps you want to enhance your leadership skills? Our leadership programme for 2024 is open to registration. Perhaps you are thinking about how your unit responds to incidents? Join our one day workshop in September and sign up for the Team Immediate Meet tool. Perhaps you want to enhance your patient wellbeing skills- then why not join us on our delirium study day in March? After the decorations come down, perhaps it time to revisit and refresh the wellbeing noticeboard with our refreshed posters and resources? Whatever 2024 holds for you, we hope its healthy, happy and that you can thrive at work.

Our FUSIC accreditation pathways at a glance

865

New FUSIC Heart registrations for 2023

350 155

New fTOE registrations for 2023

New FUSIC Lung registrations for 2023

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Other new FUSIC registrations for 2023

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Your Society Update

Edition four | December 2023

Our Year in Review It’s been a busy year for the Standards and Guidelines team and we wanted to focus on a few key highlights! In September, we were delighted to release guidance on Enhanced Maternal Care Units. The aim of the document is to build on existing Enhanced Maternal Care (EMC) guidance (2018) and provide more specific direction on how to establish EMC. Lead author, Debbie Horner, has played a key role in the guidance’s development, which began during the COVID-19 pandemic. The guidance considers the clinical needs of sick, pregnant, or recently pregnant women cared for in a non-critical environment and is a document that should be read by all healthcare professionals caring for pregnant or recently pregnant women in a hospital setting. “Women who are pregnant or recently pregnant can become unwell suddenly with catastrophic consequences for mothers, babies and their families if deterioration isn’t recognised and acted upon quickly” -Debbie Horner, Lead Author The guideline was published with support from key partners: The British Maternal & Fetal Medicine Society, The UK Critical Care Nursing Alliance, The Joint Committee for Obstetric Medicine, The Obstetric Anaesthetists’ Association, The Royal College of Obstetrics & Gynaecology and The Royal College of Midwives. You can find the full https://t.co/RUDImx1Ug0

guidance

for

Enhanced

Maternal

Care

Units

Last month, we released an update to the Central Venous Catheter Insertion Checklist. The original checklist was released in 2017, and several important changes have been made, with the key change being that all Central Venous Catheters should be transduced prior to use. The aim is to improve safety and reduce incident of inadvertent arterial puncture which were frequently reported before. Led by Council member Clare Windsor, work on the update began in 2022, with a first draft of the checklist being presented to the Society in November. Updates were made following discussions at the Standards and Guidelines Committee meeting in March this year, and Clare provided a covering statement on why the update was needed. The new update considers learning from recent patient safety incidents arising from this common procedure in ICU. The publication of NatSIPPs 2 has been acknowledged during the update and the checklist has been risk assessed and agreed by both the Intensive Care Society and the Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine. The updated checklist and accompanying statement can be found on our website. The Society and Faculty are currently in the process of reviewing the remaining safety checklists. This year has also seen the Standards division provide support for 6 external consultations, which support the development professional guidance:

Draft update of the Resuscitation Council’s Standards for Acute Care HSIB’s safety risk of air embolus associated with central venous catheters used for haemodialysis treatment National Neurosciences Advisory Group (NNAG) Traumatic Brain Injury Pathway FICM guidance on Revalidation in Intensive Care Medicine UKCCNA’s Adult Critical Care Registered Nurse Staffing Standards UK LVAD Emergency Algorithm Working Group We look forward to further guidelines and consultations being supported in 2024 to guide intensive care practice and support the professional development of staff.

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Your Society Update

Edition four | December 2023

This December we celebrated our third annual Intensive Care Society Awards. This ceremony helps us acknowledge some of the excellent work going in on in intensive care units across the country. It’s always a privilege to read your nominations and to learn about all the ways you go above and beyond working in ICU. Unfortunately, every year we have to choose a winner in each category, but all those who nominated are worthy of recognition. This year’s winners are: People of the Year Specialty Doctor of the Year – Caroline McConnell Pharmacist of the Year – Natasha Hamilton Tanner Occupational Therapist of the Year – Amil Magpantay ACCP of the Year – Kerry Angus Dietitian of the Year – Michelle Rutledge Nurse of the Year – Kym Vigus Other ICU clinician of the Year – Bex Parsons-Simmonds Consultant of the Year – Stephen Webb Outstanding Leadership – Nicki Credland Going the Extra Mile – Catherine Ridgewell Intensive Care Organisational Awards Team of the Year – Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust rehabilitation and follow up team and The Neuro ICU team at Wessex Neurosciences Association of the Year – RESCUE Collaboration Project of the Year – Lisa Hayward and the Patient Rehabilitation Guide Booklet for Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust Team Support – Dan Barry and Ina Roman for DB rotas EDI Project of the Year – Elizabeth Mercado and the Critical care Unit EDI team at Salford Care Organisation Intensive Care Education Awards Best New Education Programme - Kingston University's Critical Care Online Blended Learning Programme for Nurses Best Professional Development Award – Anoma Gunawardena, Denise Breen and Judy Cotterill Best Educational Event on Budget - David Cloete for the OXVASC education course Future of Intensive Care Awards Research – East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust Critical Care Research Team Retention Campaign Award - The Critical Care Progression Pathway at Royal Cornwall Hospital Supporters of Intensive Care Best Patient Resources - Laura Coleman and Leah Chapman from the Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust Volunteer of the Year – Louise Gallie Advocacy – Jackie Brewster Congratulations to all our winners and shortlisted nominees, and thank you to all those who nominated for helping us recognise some of the outstanding people in our community. Missed the event and watch to catch up? You can watch any time at https://youtu.be/fHPem9G_JGo

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Your Society Update

Edition four | December 2023

Our Year in Review Over the past few months, we have had the privilege of reviewing a multitude of groundbreaking research proposals for our New Investigator Award, each teeming with potential to push the boundaries of knowledge and innovation. After much deliberation and a thorough peer review process it was concluded that the following two applications would be awarded. Jan Hansel Project Title: Therapeutic Drug Monitoring – Targeting Effectiveness: an observational cohort study (TDM-TIME)

Improved

“It is a great honour to receive the ICS New Investigator Award. I would like to acknowledge the multidisciplinary teams at Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust and the University of Manchester who have been instrumental in helping set up the TDM-TIME study, which is now actively recruiting. This funding will allow us to undertake novel transcriptomic and immunological analyses of patient blood samples that will further our understanding of the relationship between antimicrobial underdosing and disease suphenotypes in critical illness.” - Jan Hansel Gayathiri Sivasubramaniam Project Title: Mechanisms of effect fibroproliferative ARDS – a pre-clinical study

dexamethasone

As we celebrate this milestone, we also express our gratitude to all the researchers who submitted proposals. The depth and breadth of ideas showcased the incredible talent within our community. Although we couldn't fund every proposal, we acknowledge the importance of each contribution to the critical care research community.

2023 was a great year for the Society’s research division and we would like to celebrate all those who submitted, our two winners of this years NIA project and our two winners from the joint ICS-NIHR award held earlier this year. Nikitas Nikitas & Brendan Sloan. We look forward to 2024 and we hope you may consider submitting to our awards, more information on next years activities will be released in Q1 of 2024.

Our JICS highlight - Dying to be better: Outlining the growing benefits of palliative care training in intensive care medicine Our JICS highlight this edition is Dying to be better: Outlining the growing benefits of palliative care training in intensive care medicine by Stuart Edwardson, Sophia Henderson, Conal Corr, Clair Clark and Monika Beatty A core part of the job of anyone working in intensive care involves navigating the challenges of End of Life Care. While rates of critical illness survival have gradually improved, 15%–20% of our patients die during their hospital admission, and a further 20% die within a year. Importantly 80% of our patients lack capacity to express their wishes with regard to treatment escalation planning. The critical care unit can be an excellent place to provide a good death, however the very nature of critical illness provides some obstacles to this. Prognostic uncertainty, time-pressured critical decision making, and lack of meaningful contact with a patient and their loved ones are but a few. In this article, the ethos of critical care and palliative care medicine are compared and it is explored how training in both of these specialities could be brought closer together and more formalised. The authors want intensive care teams of the future to be more strongly equipped with the skills to shape a critical care unit to overcome these challenges and provide the best care to these patients, many of whom may be in the final phase of their life.

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Stuart Edwardson, one of the authors of the piece

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Your Society Update

Edition four | December 2023

Zermatt to Verbier 2024 A message from the challenge founders It is hard to believe that it is nearly two years since #Z2V2022. So much has happened in the world but it is great that the legacy is becoming a reality once again in 2024. The 2022 team were amazing and we have all stayed in contact since - what an achievement on a personal and professional level. The 2024 team have been selected and begun their journey, and we all met up recently over a couple of weekends. It was great to start the whole bonding process that will be so important for the adventure and crucially assess our team’s fitness for this challenge. It was quite an eye opener for all, trekking with 12kgs in a backpack!! All the best wishes to the 2024 team in their fundraising endeavours - you will do it! And many, many thanks to AJN Steelstock, who have once again stepped up as principal sponsor for the event. Gary & Debs Pittaway

Our intrepid explorers and Fundraising Manager, Richard Ainsworth hard at work discussing the climb

Our sponsors for next years Zematt to Verbier

A message from one of our fundraisers

Hi, I’m David Sapsford, Deputy Chair of the Pharmacist Professional Advisory Group (PAG). I’m also part of the LeaP1 alumni. My role with the PAG has helped my professional development and enabled me to influence and develop delivery of critical care pharmacy nationally. I am excited to be on the Zermatt to Verbier expedition team for 2024. Having been a keen skier for the last 17 years, I have always looked with envy at those skiers making their way up the mountains on foot, seeking out areas of the mountain less travelled and less accessible, to ski the best lines. Taking on this challenge was exactly the stimulus I needed to forego the ski lifts. Our expedition will be an epic challenge, both physically and mentally and we will have to face the risk of avalanche, glacier crossing, freezing temperatures and altitude sickness. I can’t wait!

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David trying on his kit for the climb

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David in preparation for the challenge

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Newsletter name Your Society Update

Edition one | March 2023 Edition four | December 2023

Find out more and donate at bit.ly/ZtoV2024

Thank you from all of us

Another year is almost done and we thank you for joining us every step of the way and reading along with us. We love nothing more than hearing from you! Please do get in touch if you have something you would like to contribute to our newsletter. You can contact us at communicationsteam@ics.ac.uk at any time. We’d also like to give you a little reminder that we’ll be taking a pause for a bit over Christmas - we are shut from 5pm 22 December to 9am 2 January but we start right up again next year with some fantastic events you can book onto below. Get these dates in your diary for the first part of 2024! Infectious Disease and Antimicrobial Stewardship Study Day - 29 February Delirium Revolution Study Day - 6 March Liver & Nutrition Study Day -1 4 March You can book you spot on any or all of these events at ics.ac.uk/events. In the meantime, have a wonderful Christmas and New Year and we will see you in 2024! The Intensive Care Society

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