Associate Professor Karin Amrein
Karin Amrein is Consultant in Internal Medicine/Endocrinology and has a sub-speciality degree in intensive care medicine. She trained in Austria and Switzerland and lives in Graz, Austria. Karin started her endocrine/critical care research doing ICU glucose control studies and soon found out that vitamin D deficiency is rampant in critically ill patients. She then conducted the VITdAL@ICU pilot trial and developed the protocol for the VITdAL-ICU study with her mentor Harald Dobnig that started in 2010 and was published in JAMA in September 2014. This was the first large randomized controlled trial on vitamin D in critical care showing hospital length of stay between groups, but also a significantly improved survival in the severely vitamin D deficient subgroup. She is the principal investigator of the ongoing European VITDALIZE study that aims to include 2400 severely vitamin D deficient ICU patients (primary endpoint 28-day mortality).
Her major research interests are vitamin D in critical illness, endocrine emergencies, ICU families, bone health and critical care and donor health, specifically donation induced iron depletion (and its therapy) and women in science.
She has two lively daughters (aged 5 and 7) who make sure that live never gets boring. Karin recently joined her mentor Harald in private endocrinology practice but continues her split-personality as an ICU researcher.
Professor Mary Mushambi
Current posts:
Consultant obstetric anaesthetist, Leicester Royal Infirmary, Leicester, UK
Associate Medical Director, Appraisal and Revalidation Lead, University Hospitals of Leicester
DAS Professor of Anaesthesia and Airway management
Lecturer in Medical Law and Ethics at De Montfort University,
Honorary senior lecturer, University of Leicester
Previous posts held:
Secretary of the Difficult Airway Society (DAS)
College tutor, Leicester Royal Infirmary
OAA Committee member
Primary and final FRCA examiner
President of the Leicestershire Medicolegal society
Holder of private pilot’s licence
Professor Denny Levett
Professor in Perioperative Medicine and Critical Care at the University of Southampton and a Consultant in Perioperative Medicine at Southampton University Hospital NHS Foundation trust (UHS).
Denny leads the perioperative medicine service at UHS including a pre-operative CPET service, a perioperative anaemia service, a surgery school, and prehabilitation. Denny has extensive clinical and research experience in cardiopulmonary exercise testing (CPET). She is president of the Perioperative Exercise Testing and Training Society (POETTS) (www.poetts.co.uk) and she established and has chaired the National Perioperative Cardiopulmonary Exercise Testing course in the UK biannually since 2009. She is part of the Fit 4 Surgery research group in Southampton, investigating exercise and nutritional optimisation before major surgery. She is the clinical CI for the multi-centre INSPIRE trial evaluating inspiratory muscle training before surgery as a means of reducing post-operative complications. She is one of the CI’s at the perioperative medicine clinical trials unit at the Royal College of Anaesthetists in the UK.
Denny was the Association of Anaesthetists Research Fellow and her PhD thesis involved evaluating exercise capacity at up to 8000m on Mount Everest as a member of the climbing team on the Caudwell Xtreme Everest Expedition. She was the Deputy Research Leader for this altitude field study of hypoxia adaptation and the follow up expedition Xtreme Everest 2, investigating exercise efficiency in Sherpas (www.xtreme-everest.co.uk)
Dr Alex Scott
Alex Scott trained in Leicester and then completed postgraduate training in the East Midlands, Yorkshire and Northern Deaneries, obtaining Joint CCTs in Anaesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine. During that time he has developed interests in access to critical care, ITU bed provision and Point of Care Ultrasound. Starting as an informal pursuit using the goodwill of experienced trainers and completing training courses with his own time and funding, he managed for the only time in his life to catch a trend before it became widespread. He is now working as a Consultant in Anaesthesia and ICM at the James Cook Hospital in Middlesbrough. Here he is an active POCUS trainer combining FICE mentorship and CUSIC supervision, alongside his role as Faculty Tutor in a region-leading training centre and has just employed his first POCUS fellows.
Dr David Bogod
David is a consultant anaesthetist in Nottingham with a special interest in obstetrics. He has, in the past, served as President of the Obstetric Anaesthetists’ Association, Vice-President of the Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland, and Editor-in-Chief of Anaesthesia. He is currently an elected member of Council of the Royal College of Anaesthetists and chairs their Communications and External Affairs Board.
David has a long-standing interest in ethicolegal matters and has a Master’s degree in Medical Law. He runs a busy medicolegal practice, having provided reports in over 800 claims relating to medical negligence, and has served a period as a Deputy Coroner. He has provided expert reports in criminal, coronial and professional standards cases. He was an advisor and author for the 3rd, 4th and 5th National Audit Projects run by the Royal College.
As he approaches the end of his career, David has tried to derive learning from his medicolegal case-book, has published an analysis of patient claims for pain felt during Caesarean section and has submitted the next in this series of papers, concentrating on neurological damage after neuraxial block. Increasingly aware of the impact of human and non-technical factors on medical and anaesthetic mishap, David is now focussing on an audit tool for robustly assessing the way trainees are supervised clinically, and on examining the background behind seemingly ‘individual fault’ cases.
Dr Nicholas Levy
Nicholas graduated from the Royal Free Hospital in 1993 and undertook anaesthetic training in the Central London School of Anaesthesia. In 2003, he was appointed as a Consultant Anaesthetist at the West Suffolk Hospital, with an interest in acute pain medicine.
Nicholas has a special interest in the peri-operative management of the surgical patient and is member of the RCoA Perioperative Medicine leadership group (POM LG). He was invited to join this group through his interest in the perioperative management of diabetes. He has published extensively in this field and led the successful bid that NCEPOD should examine the outcome and care of the surgical patient with diabetes.
In his role as an acute pain doctor and as a member of the RCoA’s POM LG he has more recently been able to highlight the impact of sustained opioid use following surgery and the importance of effective opioid stewardship and deprescribing.
Dr Caroline Sampson
Dr Caroline Sampson BMBS BMedSci FRCA FFICM EDIC is a Consultant in Anaesthesia, Intensive care medicine and Adult ECMO.
After graduating from Nottingham University in 2003 Caz dabbled in A&E and Renal medicine before starting training in Anaesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine. She spent the penultimate year of her ICM training in London before returning to the Midlands to complete fellowships in critical care ultrasound and Extra Corporeal Membrane Oxygenation. She took up her Consultant post in Glenfield Hospital in November 2014.
She spends most of her time in Intensive Care and Adult ECMO and is occasionally allowed off the unit for good behaviour to give an anaesthetic. Alongside general and cardiac intensive care duties, being a member of the 5 strong ECMO consultant team at Glenfield involves retrieving patients with Severe Acute Respiratory Failure both conventionally and using mobile ECMO from units as far away as Northern Ireland and the Scottish Isles and providing a 24-hour telephone advice service for any clinician within Glenfield’s catchment area. She has specialist interests in Critical Care follow up and medical education and runs the ECMO fellowship programme.
Dr Alastair Nimmo
Alastair Nimmo trained in anaesthesia in Newcastle (where he also worked in Emergency and General Medicine) and Edinburgh before working as a specialist anaesthetist in the Charité Hospital in Berlin. He started using Total Intravenous Anaesthesia (TIVA) extensively while working in Berlin 25 years ago – before Target Controlled Infusion (TCI) pumps, remifentanil and BIS monitors were available. He returned to Edinburgh in 1995 to take up the post of consultant anaesthetist with a special interest in vascular anaesthesia and, after TCI pumps for the administration of propofol became available in 1996, abandoned the use of volatile anaesthetics.
Alastair’s clinical and research interests include total intravenous anaesthesia, depth of anaesthesia monitoring, and transfusion and coagulopathy in surgical patients. He is a Past President of the Society for Intravenous Anaesthesia (SIVA). Alastair was a member of the NAP5 Panel and first author of three of the chapters in the NAP5 report on Accidental Awareness during General Anaesthesia – the chapters on TIVA, Neuromuscular Blocking Drugs, and Depth of Anaesthesia Monitoring. He was co-chair of a joint Association of Anaesthetists and SIVA working party which produced Guidelines for the safe practice of total intravenous anaesthesia (TIVA), and these were published in Anaesthesia in February 2019.
Dr Sarah Hare
Dr Sarah Hare is a Consultant Anaesthetist and the National Clinical Lead for the National Emergency Laparotomy Audit based at the Royal College of Anaesthetists. She also works with HQIP, NCEPOD and collaborates with the THIS institute.
She has a keen interest in pragmatic quality improvement; in particular developing projects that involve patients and their families both as advisors and equal partners within the team thus driving the direction of change to be truly patient centred.
She is Course Director of the successful Junior Doctor’s leadership and quality improvement course, MediLead www.medilead.co.uk in Kent.
Whilst not at work, she is a keen musician who enthusiastically, and occasionally accurately, plays the Cello and Piano.
Dr.S.Radhakrishna
Dr. S. Radhakrishna (Krish) has been a consultant Anaesthetist at the University hospital of Coventry and Warwickshire (UHCW), since April 2000.
He specialises in airway management and has been actively involved in teaching and training for 20 years.
In April 2013, he was appointed the Honorary Secretary of the Difficult Airway society, UK and he was also the Chairman of the organising committee of DAS annual scientific meeting in 2014 at Stratford upon Avon, and lead it to a great success.
He has been invited to lecture on airway management and anaesthesia by prestigious organisations both within the UK and abroad. He has lectured for the RCoA1, AAGBI2, CAI* SOBA3 and DAS.
He is the course director for Advanced Trauma and Life Support and has served as ATLS faculty in the Royal College of Surgeons, London and many other regions in the UK.
One of his academic duties include teaching medical students at the Warwick university. He was invited faculty and guest lecturer in Vancouver, Romania and Brussels in 2014/2015. He was invited to organise and run airway workshops and lectures for annual conferences in India, Slovakia, Uganda and Kenya and Pakistan during the last two years.
He has several important publications with many citations. He was one of the reviewers for the DAS extubation guidelines published in 2012.
His most important work is the publication of the Survey of syringe labels which lead to the standardisation of Syringe labels in UK in 2002. He is one of the reviewers of the Cochrane anaesthesia Group, considered the highest level of evidence amongst evidence-based publications.
He is also one of the expert advisers on airway equipment for the Medicines and Health Products regulatory Agency (MHRA).
He was part of the work party member of AAGBI ’Infection in Anaesthesia’ work group that is due for publication in 2019
He is the Co-Chairman of the AAGBI ‘Ergonomics in Anaesthesia’ Working Party
Dr Dan Harvey
Dr Dan Harvey is a Consultant in Adult Intensive Care at Nottingham University Hospitals, and an Hon. Associate Professor at the University of Nottingham. He is a member of the FICM Professional Standards Committee, the ICS Standards & Guidelines Committee, and an author of the GPICS guidelines. Dan recently chaired the national consensus group which published guidance on the management of devastating brain injury in the UK. He is Vice Chair of the National Critical Care Group and Speciality Lead for the East Midlands for the National Institute for Health Research. He is National Lead for Innovation & Research in Organ Donation for NHSBT and helped develop the National Deceased Donation Course.
Dr Thearina de Beer
Dr Thearina de Beer MBChB FRCA DICM FFICM LLM (Health Law) RCPathME , is a Consultant in Anaesthetics and ICM including Neuro-ICM at Nottingham University Hospitals. Thearina was the Head of Service for Critical Care at NUH and is currently Clinical Director for the Acute Care Pathway , Clinical Support Division, which includes Critical Care, Theatres, Anaesthetics, Critical Care Outreach, Resuscitation, as well as Spiritual and Pastoral care. She has recently taken up the role of Medical Examiner at NUH. Thearina was the faculty tutor in Intensive Care Medicine and was the governance lead for Major Trauma and AICU. Thearina is on the Council for Neuro Anaesthesia and Critical Care Society (NACCS) and is the linkman for the region. Her special interests are delirium and the impact on long stay patients, legal and ethical issues around critical and neuro-critical care.
Professor Jonathan P Thompson
Honorary Professor and Consultant in Anaesthesia and Critical Care, University of Leicester and University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, Leicester UK.
Current editor-in-chief of BJA Education and previously an editor of the British Journal of Anaesthesia (2008-2017). Editorial board member of the British Journal of Anaesthesia and Perioperative Medicine. Other current roles include being an expert advisor to the British National Formulary. Previously Macintosh Professor of the Royal College of Anaesthetists, member of the ESA Pharmacology Subcommittee, Chairman of the Vascular Anaesthesia Society, and an examiner for the Primary FRCA.
Clinical work is in the general adult ICU at the Leicester Royal Infirmary covering all major acute medical and surgical specialties except cardiac and neurosurgery, with approximately 1500 admissions to ICU per year. Our hospital covers a population of c. 1 million and our Emergency Department has the highest number of attendances per year of any ED in the UK.
Invited lectures at the ESA, the World Congress of Anaesthesiologists, Japanese Society of Intensive Care Medicine, Irish National Congress of Anaesthesia, Chinese Society of Anesthesiologists, European Vascular & Endovascular Society, International Regulatory Peptide Society and several national meetings in the UK.
Led clinical research in anaesthesia and critical care teams in Leicester and the East Midlands for over 18 years and my current research interests include: novel non-invasive monitoring modalities in acute illness; and the effects of endogenous opioids on vascular function and immune modulation in sepsis. Major collaborators include Professors DG Lambert, T Coats and MR Sims, University of Leicester; Dr Girolamo Calo, University of Ferrara, Italy; and Professor Felipe dal Pizzol, University of Extremo Sul Catarinense, Criciuma, Brazil).
Published over 70 original research articles, 30 book chapters, 30 educational reviews, 10 editorials, 10 review articles. I have edited 2 invited journal volumes and 3 textbooks; most recently senior editor of the 7th edition of Smith & Aitkenhead’s Textbook of Anaesthesia (2019).
Dr Viki Mitchell
Viki qualified from Kings College London and was appointed as a consultant with an interest in maxillofacial anaesthesia at University College London Hospital in 1996.
She has maintained an interest in teaching airway management, setting up an awake fiberoptic course at UCLH and teaching on the the Royal College of Anaesthetists airway workshops. She co-authored the 2012 DAS extubation guidelines, the 2015 updated Difficult Airway Society Guidelines for the management of unanticipated difficult intubation and developed the DAS training material for emergency cricothyroidotomy.
She is currently contributing to the development of a UCL hosted Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) in airway management. This is an interactive step-by-step course aimed at reaching an unlimited number of participants worldwide to create a community of lifelong learners, it’s an exciting project which should be completed by early 2020.
In her spare time, she is Divisional Clinical director of theatres and anaesthesia at UCLH, a position she has held for the last ten years, promoting anaesthetists as the renaissance men and women of hospital medicine.
Frerk C, Mitchell VS, McNarry AF, Mendonca C, Bhagrath R, Patel A, O’Sullivan EP, Woodall NM, Ahmad I;
Br J Anaesth. 2015 Dec;115(6):827-48. doi: 10.1093/bja/aev371. Epub 2015 Nov 10.
Difficult Airway Society Guidelines for the management of tracheal extubation.
Popat M, Mitchell V, Dravid R, Patel A, Swampillai C, Higgs A.
Anaesthesia. 2012 Mar;67(3):318-40. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2044.2012.07075.x.
https://das.uk.com/content/fona_training
Professor Sandy Jack
Sandy is Professor of Prehabilitation Medicine in Clinical and Experimental Sciences Dept., Faculty of Medicine, at the University of Southampton. She is also Consultant Clinician Scientist in the Anaesthesia/Critical Care and Perioperative Medicine Research Unit, University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust (UHS). She was Director of the Clinical Diagnostic and Preoperative Assessment Exercise service at Aintree University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and is now the lead Clinician Scientist at UHS.
Sandy manages the Centre for Human Integrative Physiology in the NIHR Research Facility; she is also the co-director of the Fit-4-Surgery Consortium at UHS. She is a member of faculty on numerous courses including the European Practicum in Exercise Testing and Interpretation and UCLA Symposium on Clinical Exercise Testing and Interpretation. She is a Board member for the International Prehabilitation Society. She was an investigator on the Xtreme-Everest-2 expedition and lead investigator on the “Stress of Sailing Study” for the Volvo Ocean Race Team. Sandy is the CI for (an NHS England funded) multi-centre. Wessex Fit-Cancer Surgery Trial (WesFit) (www.wesfit.org.uk) evaluating multimodal prehabilitation for patients with cancer undergoing major intra-cavity surgery delivered in-hospital and in community settings. She is on the Personalised Care Programme Board for NHSE- Wessex Cancer Alliance.
Her research interest is primarily in exercise physiology in health and disease with a special interest in ventilatory control. More recently her research interests have been the use of exercise testing in preoperative assessment and perioperative management including prehabilitation in patients with cancer.
Dr Matt Faulds
Matt completed a joint CCT in anaesthetics and ICM, and in 2014 moved to Newcastle to take up a consultant post at the Freeman Hospital. He has a number of roles including medical co-lead for ACCPs in Newcastle, one of the longest running cohorts of ACCPs in the UK. His interests include mechanical ventilation, vascular access, rehabilitation after critical illness and multidisciplinary in situ simulation training.
Dr Alan Fayaz
Dr Alan Fayaz is a Consultant in Chronic Pain Medicine, Anaesthesia and Perioperative Care at the University College London Hospital NHS Trust. He studied Medicine at the University of Cambridge and subsequently at Imperial College London. In 2017 he successfully submitted his Thesis in order to obtain a Doctorate in Medical Research MD(Res) from Imperial College London. Research interests include: Chronic Pain Epidemiology, Chronic Pain and Cardiovascular Diseases, Patient safety and Learning from Near Misses. In 2012 the Faculty of Pain Medicine awarded Dr Fayaz with the Examination Prize for achieving the top score at the FFPMRCA examination. He has also been awarded the Nuffield Gold Medal, from the Royal College of Anaesthetists, for his performance in the primary FRCA examination.
His clinical interests include the management of patients with neuropathic pain, pain relating to complex neurological diseases, and of complex general pain. Dr Fayaz is also the acting media liaison for the British Pain Society; his remit is to raise public awareness of Chronic Pain, and to facilitate engagement between pain clinicians and patients/allied health professionals.
Dr Fayaz has strong links with undergraduate and postgraduate education. He has worked with the Faculty of Pain Medicine, and Mercy Ships to deliver EPM (Essentials of Pain Medicine) training to healthcare Professionals in Africa, and to medical students and junior doctors in the United Kingdom, and is currently serving as the ‘Regional Lead’ for EPM in London. He has completed a Generic Instructor Course, and subsequently taught on a number of Advance Life Support Courses in the United Kingdom.
Professor Mike Grocott
Mike Grocott is the Professor of Anaesthesia and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Southampton and an NIHR Senior Investigator. He is the UK NIHR Clinical Research Network national specialty lead for Anaesthesia Perioperative Medicine and Pain (2015-2022) and leads Acute Critical and Perioperative research within the Southampton NIHR Biomedical Research Centre. He is an adjunct professor of Anesthesiology at Duke University School of Medicine in North Carolina (USA) and an honorary professor at University College London and Kings College London.
Mike is an elected vice-president of the Royal College of Anaesthetists and vice-chair of the board of the new national Centre for Perioperative Care (CPOC). He chairs the board of the National Institute of Academic Anaesthesia (2018-2021) and was founding director of the NIAA Health Services Research Centre (2011-2016) at the Royal College of Anaesthetists.
He is joint editor-in-chief of Perioperative Medicine and leads the Xtreme-Everest Oxygen Research Consortium and co-leads the Fit-4-Surgery research collaboration. He has authored/co-authored more than 250 scientific manuscripts and been awarded over £25 million in research funding.
Ms Carley Mellors-Blair
Carley Mellors-Blair BSc(hons) MRSM MFHT has been a leading specialist in the holistic health industry for well over a decade and has helped over 30,000 people so far. With an academic background in the Social Sciences, and awards from Loughborough University for her research, Carley has always kept her industry knowledge and skills upgraded and continuously pushes her own level of understanding.
Through her own healing journey of reversing Multiple Sclerosis, Carley has first-hand practical experience of functional medicine and epigenetic approaches to health and wellbeing. Over the past 15 years Carley has grown a very successful clinical practise employing all of the techniques and modalities that she continues to use on a daily basis in her own life, now sharing her knowledge and good practise with people who are ready to take full responsibility of bring their own health back into balance.
Professor Ravi Mahajan
President, Royal College of Anaesthetists
Past Editor in Chief, British Journal of Anaesthesia
Past Chairman, Patient Safety Committee, European Society of Anaesthesiology
Chairman, Ethics Committee, University of Nottingham