The department should have a rota with sufficient flexibility in job planning to ensure that the usual day to day changes in urgent and emergency clinical activity can be safely covered by appropriate staff, using a clear prioritisation plan.17
Participation in morbidity and mortality and governance meetings, and participation in audit and development of local protocols, should be supported in the job plans.
VITAL is the first POMCTN-led study and a collaboration between the POMCTN (Perioperative Medicine Clinical Trials Network) and PQIP (Perioperative Quality Improvement Programme) teams.
We aim to test whether TIVA is superior to inhalational anaesthesia in terms of days alive and at home at 30 days (DAH30), and survival and quality of recovery among patients undergoing major non-cardiac surgery.
We have been recruiting well and have now passed the halfway point due to our fantastic sites. Here, one of our first site teams, at the Royal Marsden Hospital, shares its experience of recruiting to perioperative trials.
Providing safe critical care services is core business for acute hospitals; this is ever more challenging when faced with burgeoning elective surgical pathways, an ageing and more co-morbid population, and new treatment modalities. Maintaining an appropriately trained, motivated workforce is key to this.
The FICM’s Careers, Recruitment and Workforce Committee (CRW) has been seeking as much data as possible regarding the staffing of ICUs in the UK. The FICM conducted its annual census, of clinical leads, in 2022. We publish some of the analysis in FICM’s Critical Eye publication. The 2023 census will look to strengthen our understanding of the issue all ICUs are faced with. The Scottish Critical Care Delivery Group’s detailed census resulted in the Scottish government supporting 16 newly funded intensive care medicine specialty training posts for 2023.
Programmed time should be available in job plans to support appropriate attendance at multidisciplinary team meetings and preoperative assessment clinics.
Departments should ensure that they undertake succession planning reviews regularly to minimise the risk of disruption to clinical and non-clinical activity when key personnel leave, retire or change their job plans. Those taking on new roles should have time allocated to allow for a sufficient period of handover with those they replace.
