Shifting sands: Adjusting to new norms - emerging from the pandemic

After qualifying in medicine Dame Clare trained in psychiatry at the Maudsley Hospital, before following in her father’s footsteps to become a General Practitioner. She has worked in her South London practice for 30 years. During this time, alongside her clinical practice, she has held a number of national leadership positions and has led the way in reforming how drug users are managed in general practice. She was awarded an MBE in 2000 for her services to medicine and substance misuse.

She has been instrumental in the development of services for doctors and dentists with mental health problems and is the Medical Director of NHS Practitioner Health. This service has been hugely impactful, particularly on young doctors and consequently on the patients they look after and the teams in which they work. The service was awarded Outstanding by CQC rating in March 2019.  Dame Clare has also established a service for problem gamblers and chairs the newly formed registered charity, Doctors in Distress. She is also co-chair of the NHS Assembly and was awarded a DBE in the 2020 Queen’s Birthday Honours.

Professor Tim Cook work in Bath and is a full time DGH consultant in Anaesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine.

He has been fortunate to have been centrally involved in five Royal College of Anaesthetists (RCoA) National Audit Projects learning from major complications of anaesthesia: as clinical lead for NAP3 and 4 (NAP3 - epidurals/spinal anaesthesia, NAP4 - airway management) and as co-lead and director of the program for NAP5-7 (NAP5 - accidental awareness during general anaesthesia – undoubtedly the most ‘patient facing’ of all NAPs to date - NAP6 - perioperative anaphylaxis and NAP7- perioperative cardiac arrest which launched in June 2021). These big projects involve the nation’s anaesthetists collaborating to shine a light on patient-centred aspects of anaesthetic practice and safety. They are a form of professional-citizen science and are recognised to have changed the landscape of UK anaesthesia clinical practice and anaesthesia research engagement. 

Like many colleagues, he has an overall interest in improving safety and quality in anaesthesia and intensive care using a bottom-up approach.

During the COVID-19 pandemic he spent several months working from home, during which time he kept his ear to the ground and sought to aid organisational preparedness. Since July he has been back to anaesthesia and since October 2020 back full time to ICM.

Professor Tony Pickering is an expat Geordie, married with two fledgling kids and a spaniel.  He is also Professor of Neuroscience and Anaesthesia at the University of Bristol.  He is occasionally found in theatres and slightly more regularly in pain clinic.  He spent an uncommonly long time as an undergraduate Medic in Birmingham before finally graduating.  This was largely because of intercalating BSc followed by a PhD in cellular neurophysiology. Here he developed his longstanding interest in autonomic neuroscience and spinal cord function. He has pursued an academic path, initially as a clinical lecturer in Bristol and subsequently as a senior research fellow and consultant. His research group undertakes integrative systems neuroscience research into pain and autonomic control with parallel proof of concept studies in man.   

His main focus (pre-COVID...) was on developing novel translational assays and new approaches to target and harness endogenous analgesic circuits.  Having early in his career determined that airway research was an academic dead-end, he is as surprised as anyone to have enthusiastically developed a research interest in AGPs and is a member of the NIHR funded AERATOR study team in Bristol.

Dr Stephen Hearns is a consultant in emergency and aeromedical retrieval medicine. He works with Scotland’s Emergency Medical Retrieval Service. This aeromedical retrieval service delivers pre-hospital critical care for major trauma patients, rural hospital secondary retrievals and major incident responses. Inspired by experience gained working on London’s air ambulance and in Queensland Australia, Stephen led the establishment of this team from 2004 to 201.

He led the team establishing the Diploma in retrieval and transfer medicine for the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. He developed and contributes to the organisation of the annual UK retrieval conference. Stephen is an Honorary Senior Lecturer in the University of Glasgow.

His book, Peak Performance Under Pressure, was published in 2019.

He has been an active voluntary member of Arrochar mountain rescue team for 20 years and holds the Mountain Leader Award. Stephen acted as medical officer on seven international expeditions in mountain, desert, jungle and arctic environments before establishing the first expedition medicine course in the UK.

Stephen is attracted to the challenges of emergency medicine in demanding remote environments with limited resources. Stephen’s main interest is optimising team performance in high pressure situations. He researches, writes and speaks on both of these topics and provides advice to a wide range of commercial and government organisations.