Please find below a flyer advertising a FICE Echo and Chess USS course in North Wales on 24-26th July. This is not a “WICS” event but we wholeheartedly support the course and would recommend it to our members. Full details are on the flyer.

FICE CUSIC Flyer

The 2017 WICS Allied Health Professionals Meeting which will be held again at the Princess of Wales Hospital on Friday 5th May at a cost of £10 for non-members but FREE for WICS members (you can join under the Forum tab above). For further details see attached programme.

Poster Advanced Update in Critical Care

Submissions to this year’s Ed Major Prize now open

The Ed Major Prize is the main prize competition of the Welsh Intensive Care Society and will next take place at the annual Summer Scientific Meeting, 23rd June 2017 in Portmeirion. It’s open to all non-consultant WICS members (including members of WITS), nursing and AHP members and medical students.

It’s an excellent opportunity to present at a national meeting. There  will be 1st, 2nd and 3rd prizes – and a separate prize for the best case report or series. Those presenting will need to register for the meeting, but will be excused the delegate fee for the 23rd June.

The Competition Prize rules can be found here.

Submissions should use the proforma for Case report/ series or Research/ audit/ service evaluation/ survey and should be sent to: wicsarg@gmail.com.

Closing date for submission: 2nd June

Good luck!

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 24^th 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-events/ficm-annual-meeting

Hard-Cases-or-Bad-Laws-2017-ProgrammeV2

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.

WITS programme details here

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).