Please find below details below of a Silver Level IQT course being run by RRAILS. For more details contact Dr Jason O’Neil.
Please also mark your diary for the 2017 WICS Allied Health Professionals Meeting which will be held again at the Princess of Wales Hospital at a cost of £10 for non-members but FREE for WICS members (you can join under the Forum tab above). Further details – registration / programme to follow shortly.
The UK Critical Care Research Forum (UKCCRF) is open to anyone interested in undertaking research in critical and emergency care in the UK. The main objective of the UKCCRF is to advance the field of critical care research and enhance patient outcome and care, translating knowledge into practice.
The forum meets annually to share and critically review new study proposals, to share updates on the progress of ongoing studies, and to discuss research methodologies. Colleagues from all clinical backgrounds are encouraged to present their research ideas in a collaborative, supportive environment. If interested, please visit the UKCCRF website here.
The event will be held on 24th May 2017 at the Royal College of Anaesthetists in London. The full programme is attached below and details and online booking can be found on the FICM website: https://www.ficm.ac.uk/ficm-ev
The WICS Summer Scientific Meeting 2017 will be held at Portmeirion, North Wales on 22nd and 23rd June.
Guest speakers will include: Professor John Myburgh, Professor Tim Walsh, Dr Danny Bryden, Dr Dale Gardiner and Dr Nazir Lone.
The Ed Major trainee prize will be held on the morning of 23rd June.
The latest Annual Report for the Critically Ill (published 26th August, Welsh Government) provides indicators of the progress being made in the provision of critical care across Wales, but also some of the challenges we face.
Survival to ICU discharge (83%) , readmission rates (<1%) and transfer for non-clinical reasons (83 pa) have improved compared with earlier reports.
However, Wales has among the very lowest number of critical care beds per capita in Europe (5.9 per 100,000) and use of those beds is compromised by an inability within Health Boards to move recovered patients on to the general ward in a timely way: 66% patients were discharged more than 4 hours after decision to discharge and nearly 150,000 critical care bed hours lost through delayed transfer of care (equivalent to nearly 17 critical care beds).
The report also highlights concerns over workforce deficiencies and the challenge of meeting a rising demand for critical care services.
Identification of episodes of ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) in Wales is the subject of a paper published in Frontiers in Microbiology this month.
The work, a collaboration between WICS members and the Welsh Healthcare Associated Infection Programme (hosted by Public Health Wales), describes the clinical, microbiological and radiological evidence of infection present when ICU clinicians commence antibiotic therapy in invasively ventilated patients for suspected respiratory infection. The paper highlights that variability in chest x-ray performance appears to be an important limitation of current European surveillance methods for identifying VAP.
We are extremely grateful for the support of our ICU colleagues in conducting this work.
This year’s WITS Annual Meeting will be held at the SWALEC stadium, Cardiff on 30th September
The theme will be Neurosurgery and ICU with presentations by expert local and national speakers. There will also be prizes for best two trainee presentations.
Attendance fee £25 for WICS members and £35 for non-members (current annual membership for trainees only £10!)
To reserve your place and for more details please contact Caz Burford (cazburford5@hotmail.com).
The next WICS sponsored study day is being held on the 20th July at 9am at the Royal Glamorgan Hospital postgrad center. Attendance is free. Program / details below.
If you wish to attend please contact the organisers directly:
BethanGibson@doctors.org.uk
Eloise.Dawe@wales.nhs.uk
The WICS AGM for 2016 will be held at the St Brides Spa Hotel in Saundersfoot, West Wales at 3:30pm on Thursday the 23rd of June.
All members of the society “in good standing” are welcome to attend even if they are not attending the Summer Scientific Meeting.
At the meeting we will be seeking to elect up to 2 new members of WICS council and to ratify an updated constitution for the society.
Council would like to take this opportunity to publicly thank Dr Paul Morgan (the previous chair of the society) who is stepping down from council at the meeting following the end of his “ex-offico” year.
Unfortunately there are no minutes from the 2015 AGM as these were lost in an IT failure, but agenda and other supporting documents will be posted below for members information before the meeting.
If you also wish to attend the Summer Scientific Meeting it is still not too late – full details can be found further down the website page.
DRAFT WICS Constitution May 2016 version