Heartbeat: Hats off to newly qualified advanced critical care practitioners

August 5, 2021

Vicki Davies and Kayleigh Wadrup are on their way to contributing to the continuity of care for patients and their loved ones and help deliver strong service leading to greater efficiency and support of best practice.

The two are part of the advanced critical care practitioners team. Vicki and Kayleigh will be awarded Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine associate membership enabling them to be part of the medical team, incorporating the knowledge and experience gained through working in critical care for many years.

Vicki began her career as a healthcare assistant and had always had an interest in advanced practice roles. She said: “I get the best of both worlds. I can still use vital nursing skills gained over the last 20 years and the many new skills I have acquired within the critical care medical team.”

Kayleigh became interested when she worked with critical care practitioners while completing her degree, she said: “The independence, knowledge and experience first drew me to the role and the Trust has supported me through my MSc and the last two years of supernumerary practice.”

This year as we know has been particularly tough on the whole of the NHS, with a complexity and volume of patients we have never seen before.

Kayleigh added: “Alongside the COVID-19 pandemic, many of the trainee critical care practitioners have completed university modules and other clinical competencies, so we can become associate members of the Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine. So this has been an additional challenge.”

Vicki echoed this and said: “The sheer enormity of what we encountered makes me incredibly proud to work within this team. The faces and lives of the many patients and their families that we treated will be forever in our memories of this pandemic.”

Congratulations to both Kayleigh and Vicki for their qualification and award of Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine associate membership.