Whangarei Base Hospital, Maunu Road, Whangarei, 0110
It is with great sadness that we announce the death of our friend and colleague Dr Richard Harding.
Richard arrived in Whangarei in the Autumn of 2016 and quickly established himself as an integral part of both the ICU and Anaesthetic department. He brought a wealth of experience with him from the UK and this proved to be of great benefit to both the unit and the hospital as a whole.
Richard and I were employed at the same time, though Richard started working in Whangarei 6 months before me. He was a great support when I started to practice in NZ and helped make the transition from the UK much easier for me.
He was a great intensivist, unflappable in challenging clinical situations and always ready to give advice or support. His experience working as the clinical lead for ICU at Hereford and his time spent working in the ICU at the QE in Birmingham, were great assets to Whangarei ICU.
He will be sorely missed.
Our thoughts are with his wife, children and the rest of his family at this difficult time.
Dr Dan Owens
It is with great sadness that we learnt of the death of Dr J-P van Besouw.
J-P was a consultant in Cardiothoracic Anaesthesia at St George’s Hospital in London and was the president of the Royal College of Anaesthetists between 2012-2015.
He was also a fantastic teacher, mentor and colleague. As a trainee at St George’s he encouraged me to become involved in trainee representation and was immensely supportive of trainee events that we arranged, always giving of his time to come and talk to trainees about how the RCoA was helping to move the profession forward. He was also immensely supportive of me personally when I started my life as a Consultant at St George’s. Despite being unwell for sometime he faced his illness with characteristic humour and continued to keep in contact with friends and colleagues via twitter!
Both St George’s Hospital and Anaesthesia will be lessened at his passing, but he leaves a legacy that will be remembered for many years to come.
It was a pleasure to know you J-P.
Dan Owens
We have started our 14 day data collection as part of the DetermInants of Antimicrobial use aNd de-escAlation in critical care (DIANA). This is a multi-centre, multi-national prospective observational study organised through the ESICM. Which aims to describe the emipirical antibiotic therapy for infections in critical care and to describe the rate of de-escalation and associated outcome.
We are very grateful to our current medical students on placement from St George’s, University of London for their help with data collection.
On Tuesday 09th May Dr Dan Owens and Sarah Pickery Clinical Nurse Manager visited some of our outlying hospitals to discuss the Helimed transfer service and to gain insight into issues faced by our colleagues away from the base hospital.
We were fortunate in being able to use the Helicopter to transport us to Rawene, Kaitaia and Bay of Islands Hospitals, where we had productive discussions on ways to improve the service and support our peripheral hospitals.
We were even able to invite some of the school children from Rawene Primary School to be shown around the Chopper by Steve (Pilot) and Grant (Engineer)!
We hope to make this a regular occurrence and want to thank NEST for their support in making this happen.
J-L Vincent talks to the ESICM
In this video Jean-Louis Vincent talks about the role of EGDT in sepsis and what he sees coming in the future.
