Latest Blog Posts in ICU

When using the technical definition of burnout: "The reduction of a fuel to nothing", it clearly describes the state of being of the few people that I have met who are having a burnout. The problem is huge and almost every leader in healthcare agrees that this is a major problem (Swenson et al. 2016). Although many problems arise from using surveys... Read more

Over time, I think we are going to recognise that we can’t continue to develop or introduce new technology. Because of cost we are going have to be satisfied with the technologies that we have. I think the future of intensive care will be smaller as people get healthier. They are going to be less likely to come into intensive care units and more likely... Read more

Leland Kaiser, Hospital Futurist says, "The hospital is a human intervention and as such, can be reinvented at any time." With rapid advancement in technology and architecture, the hospitals of tomorrow are likely to be more home than hospital. The Intensive Care Unit is no different and the layout and structure of future ICUs is likely to be very different... Read more

Wikipedia defines intensive care medicine as a branch of medicine concerned with the diagnosis and management of life-threatening conditions requiring sophisticated organ support and invasive monitoring. 1 To this, I would add the line ‘for the patient’s benefit’ since this alters the above definition fundamentally.    Intensive care is an all-encompassing... Read more

What would you single out as a career highlight?Combining my loves of medicine and art to create a colouring book about the brain, entitled 'A Journey Through the Brain'. This was a collaboration with the very creative and intelligent Prof David Cotter and Prof Mary Cannon at the Department of Psychiatry in RCSI.If you had not chosen this career path... Read more

Zoom On Professor John B. West   Professor John B. West is a renowned respiratory physiologist and researcher. He joined the faculty of the University of California San Diego in 1969, where he still teaches first-year medical students. He is author of Respiratory physiology - the essentials, which has been translated into many languages, and is now... Read more

Nutrition is a cornerstone of recovery and rehabilitation in ICU patients, and the appointment of qualified dietitians can help to attain best results in a number of ways.Here we provide some of the key reasons to include a dietitian within your ICU team.1. Sensible guidelines: Having a dietitian on hand within the ICU is important towards forming and... Read more

A clinical sign such as oliguria is a marker of a significant problem. "Busy slides" in a presentation are a similar warning in a presentation. Neither oliguria nor busy slides can be accepted as a minor issue and resolved with a simple prescription. One must address the whole patient, diagnose the underlying pathology and manage that."Busy slides"... Read more

The intensivist of the future will need three sets of principles that guide everything they do: an internal set, an interpersonal set and an organisational set. Those internal principles that we should be selecting for are people who are humble, curious and compassionate. You cannot embrace intensive care medicine if you are not humble enough, and you... Read more

Key opinion leaders (KOL) in the ICU field are often coming up with fantastic tips for becoming a better leader or clinician. We decided to share our top three with you:1.  Find/Encourage a BalanceBalance is recommended in a variety of areas in life, and so it is with clinical practice too. It’s critical for a clinician to assess the criteria of an... Read more


Highlighted Products