Nursing Staff

Like all critical care units in London, recruiting and maintaining nurses is difficult.  We have a lot of excellent nurses from all sorts of backgrounds both clinically and geographically; some are not only new to critical care but also new to London!

You will find that the ICU nurses are extremely approachable and they will always be willing to help you and give advice.  If you have any problems with the nursing staff please talk to the Band 7 in charge of your area and, if necessary, the consultant on call or Matron if required.

Trainees and Rotas

In 2022, there are approximately 50 junior clinicians in rota slots working within the ACCU.  You come from a variety of backgrounds.

Dr Jonathan Mackenney is the consultant with overall responsibility for the trainees (Faculty Tutor) and Dr Caroline Higenbottam is the consultant with ultimate responsibility for the trainee rota.  You will be contacted by the trainee rota coordinators too.

There is a separate page on rota rules.

Sick Leave

If you are unable to come to work because of illness you must inform the ICU consultant in charge as early as you can (ext. 45811).

Shobhana Ranade (ACCU administrator) must also be informed about all sick leave.  Extension 40345/6 or shobhana.ranade@nhs.net

Do not forget to let Shobhana know when you have returned to work.

Post

Post for the anaesthesia trainees may be sent to the Anaesthetics Department where you will have a post slot.  There are pigeon holes in the 4E doctors’ office for post delivered to ACCU.  Trainee payslips are also delivered to the 4E doctors’ office.

Trust E-mail

You should each obtain a Trust log-in (for computer access).  If you do not already have one, the Trust will allocate you an nhs.net address.  It is Trust policy that all employees regularly check their work email.  Important information is often sent by this route and therefore it is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY to check it regularly.  You can access nhs mail at portal.nhs.net.

Appraisal and Assessment

All trainees who rotate to the RLH ACCU will be allocated a consultant as their educational supervisor.  Dr Mackenney will allocate supervisors but feel free to discuss problems, clinical or otherwise, with any of the consultants.  You should arrange an appraisal date within two weeks of starting on the ACCU to set some educational objectives for your period on the unit.

We will do an assessment at the end of each three / six month ICU module for each of you and this will be discussed with you and submitted for your ARCP/RITA.

We welcome constructive feedback on your time with us: you are encouraged to complete a feedback form (anonymously if you wish).  .

Trust grade doctors NOT on a training program and revalidation

It is a statutory requirement to have annual appraisals that form part of your revalidation by the GMC (the ARCP counts for this for doctors in training posts).  Doctors who are in an OOPE/R etc. and working on the ACCU will still be in an ARCP program so this paragraph does not apply to you.

If you are not in a deanery training programme and not receiving an annual ARCP assessment then you have to undergo formal appraisal once a year.  You can do this at the RLH through the Trust PReP system.  If you are a Trust Doctor / Clinical Fellow, then this applies to you.

If you only have a 3 or 6 month contract and the period does not cover your revalidation due date or when you are due your annual formal appraisal, you DO NOT need a PReP account (though one will be set up if your contract is extended).  At the end of your job, please ask your educational supervisor to use a blank output form (ACCU folder / Trainees / Appraisal OUTPUT form) to provide structure to a local assessment of your clinical work, which you could then take to your next employer to confirm your work has been reviewed in a fashion suitable for revalidation.

Early in your placement please contact Revalidation@bartshealth.nhs.uk to get registered on the PReP system if you need to.  Make your educational supervisor aware, as they will have to conduct a formal appraisal with you when you finish the post.  This is a joint responsibility between you and your supervisor.  You risk not being revalidated if this is not completed.

Clinical Governance

Morbidity and Mortality (M+M)

The unit has a rolling programme of clinical governance, which includes a mortality/morbidity meeting and a multi-disciplinary Governance group.

We discuss cases of interest at the weekly M&M meeting.  Anybody can suggest a case for discussion.  These will typically include any patient subject to an incident, interesting or difficult cases, or cases with a good learning point.

These cases are allocated to trainees and a presentation of the case should be prepared.  The ideal trainee to present is (a) rota’d to be working on the Monday of the meeting, (b) familiar with the patient, having been involved to some extent with their care.  The presentation should include relevant results, imaging and data as appropriate.  There is a slide set proforma available at –

I:\surgery_&_anaes\ACCU\M&M

The discussion should involve the whole multi-disciplinary team and the outcome will be recorded.  This may generate some action points that will be fed back into the ACCU Governance group.  Dr Dan Kennedy is the Governance Lead, and Dr Colette Coyle the lead for M&M.

Incident Reporting and Serious Untoward Incidents (SUI)

The Datix Incident Reporting system can be accessed via the Barts Health intranet homepage.  They should be reported to Helen Hewitt, or another of the ACCU Matrons.

If you have been involved in an SI, try and attend the SI meeting (along with one of the ACCU consultants); it is a useful learning exercise. They are on MS teams these days.

Educational Opportunities are found here

Audit

We participate in ICNARC, the National Intensive Care Audit database and almost all the consultants are continually involved in some sort of research, audit or data collection.

Dr Nikul Patel has a list of audit projects being done or ones we need trainee help with for those of you who are interested. Please see him early in the rotation if you want to get involved – It’s probably a good idea to meet your educational supervisor first to make sure that an audit is an appropriate way to spend your time on the ACCU.

If you have your own ideas for audit projects, all the better! Please discuss with Dr Patel or your educational supervisor who can put you in touch with an appropriate member of the team.

All audits must be registered with the Clinical Effectiveness Unit, via Dr Patel. Further information about audit activity, results of recent audits and registration forms can be found at

I:\surgery_&_anaes\ACCU\Audit\ACCU clinical audit program

Research

Professor Rupert Pearse, Drs Zudin Puthucheary and John Prowle all hold substantive academic positions within the Medical School.  They have a number of PhD and MD students under their supervision and have a broad research portfolio, specialising in Peri-operative Medicine, Muscle Loss in Critical Illness, and AKI.  If you are interested in discussing research and are considering trying to gain a higher degree at some point during your training they are happy to be contacted to offer help and advice.

Many other consultants are also substantially involved in research (for example Drs Kirwan, Hewson, Zolfaghari, and Shirley hold Honorary Senior Lectureships within the Medical School) so if you have any questions or an idea you want to talk through, ask around, there is likely to be someone who can help you!

There are also a number of portfolio studies taking place on the unit and an active group of research nurses who you will notice wandering around the ACCU, screening patients and keeping you up to date with what projects are on the go.  Please let them know if you think there is a patient who may be eligible for a study.

Projects, Presentations and Funding

If you do a project, audit, data collection etc. whilst on the ACCU and this gets written up and accepted as an abstract somewhere then there are some funds that can support your travel and registration to that meeting.

Applications are open to all members of the ACCU trainees (research and clinical) and assessed on their individual merit but preference will be given to those who do clinical work on the ACCU.  There is an upper limit of £600 but we will gladly discuss all applications and can make exceptions.

We appreciate that you may have left the unit by the time your data is presented but as long as the data was collected from the RLH ACCU you are eligible to apply.

Please contact Chris Kirwan or Dan Kennedy if you feel you qualify!