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Heartbeat: City Hospital plays host to new regional Critical CARE Course

March 4, 2020

Last year a new critical care course accredited by the Intensive Care Society was hosted at City Hospital. It has been devised and developed by three intensivists within the West Midlands, including one of our consultants:

  • Dr Jonathan Hulme: Consultant in Intensive Care Medicine & Anaesthesia (Sandwell & West Birmingham NHS Trust)
  • Dr Andy Burtenshaw: Consultant in Intensive Care Medicine & Anaesthesia (Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust)
  • Dr Laura Kocierz: Specialist Trainee in Intensive Care Medicine & Anaesthesia (West Midlands Deanery)

The Critical CARE Course is designed to reflect current and contemporary intensive care medicine practice within Europe and is delivered largely through facilitated small group learning. Whilst it is aimed at those less experienced in the specialty, it is also valuable for the wider multidisciplinary team and for more experienced colleagues in other specialties who wish to learn more about intensive care medicine.

Having made its debut at City Hospital this time, the course will be hosted by the Trust a further three times in 2020 and candidates from across the region will attend alongside our critical care clinicians.

It has been well received so far. Megan, a junior doctor who attended the course commented: “The format was great. The case studies reinforced the points made during the introductions of the workshops.” Another attendee, Nikita, also a junior doctor echoed these sentiments saying: “It’s useful for critical care and for forming a solid basis for other aspects of medicine.”

Speaking to Heartbeat, Dr Hulme told us: “The face-to-face part of the Critical CARE Course is one day long and is designed to make attendance easier and low cost for attendees and faculty alike. We provide all attendees with an extensive purpose-written manual. Produced with input from a wide range of colleagues from across the region it provides essential pre-course reading.”

Dr Hulme added: “Feedback about the course so far has been extremely good which we’re all pleased about and, to be honest, we’re somewhat relieved after the amount of time and effort from a lot of people to get this new initiative up and running. It was a special moment delivering the course at City Hospital and we look forward to hosting more sessions in 2020.”

In addition to the spread of the course through the West Midlands, other local deaneries are developing plans to adopt this course as core training for their own critical care and intermediate medical trainees.

Rebecca O’Dwyer, Joint Clinical Lead Critical Care said: “Having this course hosted at our Trust is a positive endorsement for critical care. It also provides an opportunity for colleagues from other specialties to collaborate and learn from each other, all with the same shared vision, to provide the best critical care to patients under what can often be difficult circumstances.”