Award recognition for Lancashire and South Cumbria Critical Care teams

Teams and staff members from Lancashire and South Cumbria have been recognised in a national award ceremony.

Work led by the Lancashire and South Cumbria Critical Care Network was named Collaboration Project of the Year at the Intensive Care Society Awards last week, with East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust’s (ELHT) Critical Care Research Team being awarded the Research Team of the Year title.

The Intensive Care Society is the largest multi-professional intensive care membership organisation in the world, supporting the intensive care community by providing education, standards and guidance, policy, co-ordination of critical care research.

The work that saw the Lancashire and South Cumbria Critical Care Network walk away with an award was the development and system-wide implementation of its Network Rehabilitation Booklet.

Nicola Williams, the network’s Allied Health Professional (AHP) lead, said: “This was one of our priorities to develop and implement over the last 12 months and was aimed at providing patients with information that could support their recovery on discharge from Critical Care and developed using a multi-professional approach with input from dietetic, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, psychology and speech and language therapy. 

“Our network-wide document has enabled consistency in information given out to patients, supported attainment of GPICS (the national standards), supported patients in their recovery from critical illness and improved their experience and outcome. It received wonderful patient feedback and after presenting this at the national ICS SOA Conference, has been used as a platform to support development of the national rehab booklet.”

The Critical Care Network’s work on harmonising how vancomycin is administered as a continuous infusion was recognised in the same Collaboration Project of the Year category, being named runner-up, while the Network’s Allied Health Professionals Training Needs Analysis Project was also shortlisted.

ELHT’s Critical Care Research Team was recognised for as “an area of excellent practice and innovation”. From a low point of only having only 22 patients randomised to 2 trials in 2019/20 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the unit critical care research team was developed and was this year able to eclipse those figures with 278 patients randomised across 10 live trials. 

Shaun Morgan, the Network’s lead pharmacist, said: “The unit has developed a very simple, low-tech solution to an engagement problem, by holding meetings each month after their critical care multi-disciplinary team meetings and developed a research hub. 

“This approach of the whole team has transformed the unit teams’ ability to work across a larger group of trials, cross speciality and across different healthcare disciplines, which has translated into better outcomes, better involvement, more engagement and overall, a much stronger foothold in the greater Manchester critical care research network.”

Network director Tracy Crumbleholme said: “We are immensely proud of these achievements and of the staff from our critical care units who have worked with the network to develop and embed these improvements.”