We are delighted to feature ICU Management's Editor-in-Chief,
Professor Jean-Louis Vincent, in Zoom On. Dr. Vincent is Professor of
Intensive Care at the University of Brussels, and intensive care
physician in the Department of Intensive Care at the Erasme University
Hospital in Brussels. We put our seven questions to him:
1. What are your key areas of interest and research?
They are multiple,
as I am interested in many (virtually all) aspects of intensive care
medicine. But if I had to cite some: sepsis, haemodynamic monitoring,
respiratory failure, trauma, circulatory shock, ethical aspects…
2. What are the major challenges in your field?
To
conduct prospective, randomised, controlled clinical trials. With our
very heterogeneous populations and individual preferences about
prolonged life-support, virtually all our trials targeting mortality
have been negative in our field.
3. What is your top management tip?
Make
everybody happy… and make sure they can take their responsibilities
without excessive reliance on your opinion. Buddha said “Do not believe
in what I said, but think about it…” I think it is a great principle.
4. What would you single out as a career highlight?
The
celebration I received when I stepped down as Head of the Department –
it is the day where people can express what they really think about you.
5. If you had not chosen this career path you would have become a…?
An
intensivist – there is no reasonable alternative: our health is our
most precious good and helping people whose health is damaged or at
stake is the highest privilege on earth.
6. What are your personal interests outside of work?
To enjoy life – to celebrate !
7. Your favourite quote?
“Whenever people agree with me, I feel I must be wrong” (Oscar Wilde)
Dr.
Vincent, MD, PhD, gained his medical degree from the Université Libre
de Bruxelles, Belgium with magna cum laude, with a specialty in Internal
Medicine and Intensive Care Medicine. His postgraduate training
included two years of fellowship in critical care medicine at the
University of Southern California with Prof. Max Harry Weil. He joined
Erasme Hospital's Intensive Care Department in 1979, taking over as Head
of Department from the service's founder, Professor Robert Kahn.
Dr.
Vincent has published more than 800 original articles, some 300 book
chapters and review articles, 850 original abstracts, and has edited 86
books. He is co-editor of the Textbook of Critical Care (Elsevier
Saunders, 5th Edition) and the “Encyclopedia of Intensive Care Medicine”
(Springer).
Dr. Vincent has been the
Editor-in-Chief of ICU Management since its inception. In addition he is
the editor-in-chief of "Critical Care" and "Current Opinion in Critical
Care". He sits on the Editorial Boards of about 30 journals including
"Critical Care Medicine" (senior editor), American Journal of
Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine (AJRCCM), "PLoS Medicine",
"Lancet Infectious Diseases", "Intensive Care Medicine", "Shock", and
"Journal of Critical Care".
Dr. Vincent is
currently President of the World Federation of Societies of Intensive
and Critical Care Medicine (WFSICCM). He is a Past-President of the
Belgian Society of Intensive Care Medicine (SIZ), the European Society
of Intensive Care Medicine (ESICM), the European Shock Society (ESS),
and the International Sepsis Forum (ISF).
For
34 years he has organised an International Symposium on Intensive Care
and Emergency Medicine which is held every March in Brussels.
He
has received the Distinguished Investigator Award of the Society of
Critical Care Medicine, the College Medalist Award of the American
College of Chest Physicians, was the Recipient of the "Society
Medal”(lifetime award) of the European Society of Intensive Care
Medicine and has received the prestigious Belgian scientific award of
the FRS-FNRS (Prix Scientifique Joseph Maisin-Sciences biomédicales
cliniques.
