acmedsci published this video item, entitled “Intensive care insights during COVID-19 | Professor Natalie Pattison & Professor Charlotte Summers” – below is their description.
Two Professors of intensive care, working on ITU wards through COVID-19, describe how their teams adapted and innovated to cope with the pandemic and help their patients.
The doctors describe their experiences on ITU wards, with challenges from ventilation (including CPAP) and proning to staffing and wellbeing, with suddenly surgeons from other areas of the hospital coming onto intensive care wards to act as healthcare assistants.
They talk about research and finding new ways to deal with issues such as supply chains breaking down, with shortages of key drugs. They share their experiences of the UK’s RECOVERY trial and ventilation challenge programme, where UK manufacturers managed to produce safe and effective ventilators within weeks. They talk about the use of dexamethasone and ITU stretch capacity, with the UK creating the equivalent of 140 new intensive care units. This also required stretching the staffing, with the number of patients being looked after per doctor more than doubling.
The basic research infrastructure of the NHS was in place already, and for the first time these research benefits were everybody’s business, and being realised in real time. The pandemic has been a time of great change, but this research ability is truly something to hold onto going forward.
The speakers in this talk are Professor Natalie Pattison, Professor of Clinical Nursing at the University of Hertfordshire, and Professor Charlotte Summers, Professor of Intensive Care Medicine at the University of Cambridge.
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