Speakers

Dr. Jacinda Bunch is an Assistant Professor in the College of Nursing at the University of Iowa, whose program of research is focused on patient safety and emergency response. Dr. Bunch is particularly interested in how nurses and pre-hospital clinicians work to keep patients safe, seek help, and how professional relationships impact clinical outcomes. Dr. Bunch also teaches students about improving health systems, leadership, and professional engagement. 

Her research includes assessment of rapid response teams in acute care hospitals and unique settings, evaluating uptake and adoption of patient safety concepts, simulation training for pre-hospital providers and rural hospitals, identifying strategies that promote safe bedside nursing shift transition, assessing the impact of patient voices in safety, and the toll of COVID-19 on nurse managers. 

She serves as a certified adult sexual assault nurse examiner with the Johnson County Sexual Assault Response team, a volunteer emergency medical technician (EMT) in her rural community, elected secretary of the International Society for Rapid Response Teams Advisory Committee, and is the senior advisor of an 8-million dollar grant to establish Simulation in Motion-Iowa program providing simulation education to first responders, emergency medical services and healthcare providers across Iowa to improve clinical outcomes.

Dr. Chua Wei Ling is a Research Fellow at the Alice Lee Centre for Nursing Studies, National University of Singapore. Her research interests include the exploration of rapid response systems for recognising and responding to clinical deterioration, sepsis awareness and knowledge, and interprofessional collaboration. Dr. Chua has published more than 30 research papers in peer-reviewed journals. She is the pro-tem secretary of the Chapter of Rapid Response Systems, under the Society of Intensive Care Medicine, Singapore.

Alison Fox-Robichaud, BSc, MSc, MD, FRCPC (Int Med, Crit Care)

Dr. Fox-Robichaud (she/her) is a Professor of Medicine at McMaster University and a Critical Medicine Specialist, Head of Service for the Critical Care Response Team and Director of Medical Education at Hamilton Health Sciences. She is also the Scientific Director of Sepsis Canada, a nationally funded research network. She has over 140 peer reviewed publications reflecting broad academic interests including animal models of sepsis, health services research and clinical trials.

A leader in the critical care community, she was the first female president of the Canadian Critical Care Society (CCCS) from 2015-2018 and the first female chair of the Canadian Critical Care Examination board. Internationally, she is a member of the Global Sepsis Alliance board, the advisory board of the International Society for Rapid Response Systems and the council of the World Federation of Intensive and Critical Care.

She has been honored nationally for her work in electronic early warning scores to prevent patient deterioration. Internationally, in 2018 the Global Sepsis Alliance awarded her an individual award for her sepsis leadership

Prof Dianne Stephens completed her Anaesthesia and Intensive Care specialist training and moved to Darwin in 1998 as the first ICU Specialist in the Northern Territory and inaugural Director of Royal Darwin Hospital Intensive Care Unit.  As Director of ICU at RDH from 1998 to 2016, she provided leadership in best practice clinical care for the critically ill of the Northern Territory, established a research program, developed an organ donation agency, and contributed passionately to improving patient care throughout the hospital system through clinical governance. Her research interests include sepsis, melioidosis, critical illness and renal disease, Indigenous critical illness outcomes, communicating well with patients and families, and disaster medicine. In 2017 she moved into the role of Medical Director of the National Critical Care and Trauma Response Centre (NCCTRC) drawing on her disaster medicine experience with the Bali Bombings, deployment into Iraq with the RAAF and working through Cyclone Winston in Fiji. Prof Stephens held public health leadership roles in the NT during the COVID 19 pandemic whilst developing postgraduate courses in aeromedical retrieval and health emergency preparedness and response at Charles Darwin University. In January 2022 the CDU Menzies School of Medicine was established and Prof Stephens was appointed into the role of Foundation Dean.

Clinical experience in adult quaternary Intensive Care with prior experience with pre-hospital retrieval services.

The medical lead of the Medical Emergency Response (MER) Service. The MER Service is a stand-alone, Consultant-lead, critical care based RRT for the RAH. It is funded and staffed for Consultants, junior Medical and Critical Care trained nursing staff. Supports under and post graduate education.

Chair of the Central Adelaide Local Health Network Committee for Standard 8, Recognising and Responding to Acute Deterioration Standard.

CICM Representative to ANZCA Peri operative Medicine Steering Group

Conjoint Associate Professor at the Faculty of Health Sciences, School of Medicine, University of Adelaide. Principle Supervisor of Higher Degree students, and research interest, within areas related to detecting and responding to acute clinical deterioration, peri-operative medicine and Health Service evaluation.

Professor Frances Lin is an established acute and critical care researcher and educator. Her research expertise is in health services research, implementation science, and designing complex interventions to improve patient safety and quality of care. Her current program of research focuses on patient flow in the adult intensive care units, including delayed admission, delayed discharge, and after hours discharge. Collaborating with others and helping health services/organisations to build clinical research capacity are key features of Frances Lin’s work.

Frances has been an active contributor to Australian College of Critical Care Nurses (ACCCN). She is currently the Chair of ACCCN’s Quality Advisory Panel, and has been a member of the Quality Advisory Panel, the Research Advisory Panel, and the Education Advisory Panel. She was a working party member of the ANZICS Intensive Care Clinical Indicators review in 2015 and 2019 as ACCCN’s representative.

Graduated and trained at Medical Faculty, Charles University in Plzeň, Czech Republic, before moving to Australia in 2002. Research Fellow at Kuopio University, Finland and at University of Ulm, Germany. Holds a PhD and an Associate Professorship in Critical Care at the Faculty of Medicine, Charles University, the Czech Republic and is a Clinical Associate Professor at the Australian National University, Goulburn Clinical School. He has interest in critical care echocardiography, lung ultrasound, telehealth as well as in sepsis, immune function, and metabolism in critical illness. Co-authored over 60 articles in peer reviewed journals.

Alex is co-director of the ICU in Wellington, New Zealand, medical director of the Aeromedical Retrieval Service, and Chair of the National Critical Care Advisory Group to the Ministry & Te Whatu Ora. He trained in London, Australia and New Zealand and has been involved in the design and implementation of hospital rapid response systems in several countries. He led the New Zealand Health Quality & Safety Commission’s national ‘Deteriorating Patient’ programme for 5 years. This led to the national roll-out of an evidence-based Early Warning Score, a standardised vital signs chart, a patient & family escalation system and a national Shared Goals of Care approach to ensure the treatment was both wanted and warranted. His career highlight remains providing intensive care to a chimpanzee at Wellington Zoo. He lives in Wellington with his wife, two daughters and a dog. Since the new ownership, he is wasting much less time on Twitter.

Daryl graduated from the University of Melbourne in 1996 and is an Intensive Care Specialist at Austin Health.

He is also a honorary Professor at Monash University, and at the University of Melbourne and has previously been an advisor to the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in healthcare.

He has completed a Doctor of medicine in aspects of the Rapid Response Team (RRT) and has also completed a PhD on the RRT that assessed the characteristics and outcomes of patient who are reviewed by the RRT, and details of resource utilization of the MET in ICU-equipped hospitals throughout Australia.

Daryl is the medical director of critical care outreach at the Austin Hospital and is the past president of the international society for Rapid Response Systems.

He has an interest in the role of RRTs in the recognition of and response to sepsis in ward patients, and improvement of governance of sepsis in hospitals.

Professor Deepak Bhonagiri is the Chair of the ANZICS Safety and Quality Committee and a senior Intensivist from Sydney Australia. His research interests include rapid response systems, teleICU, artificial intelligence and remote monitoring. He is the Net Zero Environmental Sustainability lead for Intensive Care at NSW Health and is undertaking multiple projects to promote environmental sustainability in ICU. He is on the Board of Director and a Clinical Director for Critical Care in South Western Sydney Local Health District and leads many quality improvement projects to improve safety and quality as well as patient and clinician experience in this culturally and linguistically diverse population. He recently completed his terms as an examiner for the Fellowship exam of the College of Intensive Care Medicine and mentors students and young research candidates in higher degree research.

He has board certificates in general internal medicine and critical care medicine in the US. His training background included a residency in General Internal Medicine at the University of Hawaii, a fellowship in critical care medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, and the Infectious Diseases fellowship in the UCLA combined program.

Following his return to Japan in 2007, Professor Fujitani has championed the introduction of the SCCM sponsored Fundamental Critical Care Support course, Fundamental Disaster Course, and Multi-professional Critical Care Board Review Course in Japan. Additionally, he has advocated the concept of a Rapid Response System throughout Japan.

Professor Fujitani is the national primary investigator of REMAP-CAP (Randomized, Embedded, Multifactorial, Adaptive Platform trial for Community-Acquired Pneumonia) and a dedicated international study for severe pneumonia with COVID-19.

Professor Fujitani was elected to the Board of the Japanese Society of Intensive Care Medicine (JSICM) in 2016 and is now a board member in charge of the society’s Committees in Education and Rapid Response System.

He has a Masters of Public Health from Harvard and is a past Harkness Fellow in Health Policy. He is a previous senior medical advisor to the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care and the past chair of Choosing Wisely Australia. He is interested in the sustainability of the healthcare system and improving the quality of care that we provide to our patients.

Maja van Bruggen is the Director Sustainability Action for the Northern Territory Department of Health (NT Health). Her role is to shift NT Health towards more environmentally sustainable delivery of healthcare in response to the climate crisis. This role includes all ten dimensions of the Global Green and Healthy Hospitals agenda and spans strategic, operational and grassroots contexts. Maja has stepped into this role after 14 years in NT Health in policy, service development and health funding roles. Prior to this Maja worked in organisational change, and workforce and leadership development across a range of government agencies. Maja has also been actively involved on Boards in the not for profit sector since 1999. She has a Communications Degree and Masters in Training and Development, as well as a strong interest in applying behavioural insights, innovation practices and a mission orientation to help create more sustainable and regenerative practices in healthcare.

Dr Hannah Rotherham is an Intensive Care Specialist at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and Clinical Lecture at the University of Melbourne. She has an interest in ICU outreach, rapid response systems and end of life care. She has completed a Masters of Health Services Management with a major in Safety and Quality and is an active member of her hospital’s Recognising and Responding to Acute Deterioration committee. She has completed previous work looking at the end of life care issues surrounding MET calls. Hannah is also passionate about trainee welfare and patient-centred care at the end of life.

Professor Imogen Mitchell is a Senior Staff Specialist in Intensive Care at the Canberra Hospital and Executive Director, Research and Academic Partnerships at Canberra Health Services.

Associate Professor Naomi Hammond is an intensive care nurse researcher who holds a part-time role as the Intensive Care Clinical Research Manager at Royal North Shore Hospital, Sydney, Australia and the Critical Care Program Lead at The George Institute for Global Health. Naomi holds several other appointments including NHMRC Emerging Leader Fellow; Conjoint Associate Professor at the Faculty of Medicine, University of New South Wales; Editorial Board Member for Australian Critical Care Journal; Chair of the Australian College of Critical Care Nurses Research Advisory Panel, and Senior Research Fellow with Sepsis Australia.

 Naomi’s main research interests include fluid resuscitation, sepsis, fever management, knowledge translation and implementation research, health economics, and long-term outcomes post critical illness. Naomi has experience supervising and mentoring medical trainees, nursing staff, PhD, Masters and medical students in both the clinical and academic environment.

Additional to Naomi’s academic portfolio, she also has extensive clinical trials operational management experience including finance, regulatory processes, personnel, project and program management in a clinical and NGO environment.

A graduate of Georgetown University School of Medicine, Dr. DeVita completed postgraduate training in internal medicine and critical care medicine. Dr. DeVita then moved to the University of Pittsburgh, where he rose to professor during his 23 year career there. While at the university, he became Chair of the Ethics Committee, and led the group to create the world’s first policy for donation of organs following removal of life sustaining treatment, a procedure now called Donation after Circulatory Determination of Death or DCD. That policy, now over 25 years old, is still the gold standard for care of the dying who wish to become organ donors after death.

Perhaps his most impactful work was creating the western hemisphere’s first Rapid Response System. He moved “upstream” from the arrest situation to focus instead on a system to prevent in-hospital cardiac arrests by, in essence, deploying the cardiac arrest team before the arrest occurred. He conceptualized and created an objective set of triggering criteria that are now widely emulated. The RRS realized a 70% decrease in cardiac arrests. The RRS is a worldwide phenomenon. To support the quality of the RRS, he created an interdisciplinary training program for crisis response that utilizes full-scale simulation. Dr. DeVita’s contribution was to identify 8 key roles required for every crisis situation, and then train teams to rapidly self organize and respond reliably to any crisis in the simulated setting.

Dr. DeVita has published 100 articles, dozens of textbook chapters, and delivered innumerable lectures on the regional, national, and international stage over the years.

He was awarded the Christer Grenvik Award for contribution to critical care ethics, and the society’s highest honor, the Asmund Laerdal Award for contribution to resuscitation research. He is the only person to win both awards.

Dr. DeVita was a founding member of the Society for Simulation in Healthcare, and was elected its president in 2009. This year he was honored by being named a fellow in the inaugural class of its new Academy of Simulation in Healthcare. In 2016, he was elected to fellowship in the Royal College of Physicians, an unusual honor for a non-British citizen, and someone who was not previously a member of the College. Dr. DeVita was also a founding member of the new International Society for Rapid Response Systems, and was elected its founding President.

Nicky is an intensivist from Western Health in Melbourne with an interest in advanced communication skills, staff wellbeing and ICU culture. Her other interests are obstetric critical care and mentoring junior medical staff. She is the outgoing New Fellow’s Representative on the CICM Board and sits on the CICM Victorian State Committee and the ANZICS Safety and Quality Committee. Outside of work, Nicky loves hiking, pottery and hanging out with her young family

Margaret Nicholson is an ICU Nurse Practitioner at Liverpool Hospital. Margaret has held numerous positions with over 30 years’ experience in intensive care including management and research, and over 36 years in nursing. Margaret is Co-Chair of the SWSLHD governance committee for Nurse Practitioners.

Margaret is part of the Medical Emergency Team, developing the Key Performance Indicators and training of staff attending emergency calls during her time in ICU.  Part of her role includes management of patients with tracheostomy tubes, she became involved in the training of nursing and medical staff in tracheostomy emergencies after working collaboratively with Intensivists and ENT specialists and Head and Neck surgeons and has run workshops with Anaesthetist and ENT specialists on airway emergencies. Margaret is currently working with a National team to develop training for MET responders.

She has been involved in several projects and has published on deterioration and observation and monitoring and is currently involved in writing a paper on deterioration and responders roles in paediatric resuscitation.

Margaret is currently NSW Chair of the Australian College of Nurse Practitioners, Vice President Australian College of Critical Care Nurses (ACCCN) NSW Branch, the Chair of the National ACCCN Resuscitation Advisory panel, an executive committee member of the Australian Resuscitation Council. Margaret is leading work with a team from the Agency for Clinical Innovation NSW to develop a booklet for patients and carers going home with a tracheostomy. Is part of the ACI Sepsis committee and the Deteriorating Patients Steering committee for CEC.

At home she has five children, seven grandchildren, lives on acreage and she has completed building a house with her husband.

Kylie Feely completed her undergraduate nursing degree at LaTrobe University in 2000, she then went on to work at Alfred Health. Transferring to ICU in 2003, she finished her Critical Care Graduate certificate in 2004. In 2008, Kylie commenced employment with Western Health Intensive Care services and has been a valued employee ever since.

In 2021, Kylie was appointed as the Sunshine ICU equipment nurse, job sharing with Edward Quilas, fulfilling her life long career goal. In the first months of her new role, Kylie was an integral part of the ICU COVID coordination team helping with the COVID surge response. She was essential to the successful expansion of Sunshine ICU’s 10 ICU equivalents to 17 including a satellite ICU in the Sunshine recovery ward.

Kylie is the OHS HSR for Sunshine ICU, a position she takes great pride in. In 2023, Kylie was nominated for the ANMF HSR of the year.

Kylie is a passionate member of the Western Health Sustainability team and has implemented many local changes to Sunshine ICU. Kylie believes simple ideas can have big impacts and hopes to implement some of these projects hospital wide.

is an Intensive Care Specialist at The Alfred Hospital, Melbourne. Her interests and responsibilities include care of deteriorating patients, Medical Emergency Teams sepsis and in-hospital cardiac arrest. She is the ICU Clinical lead for Medical Emergency Teams in the Alfred Hospital

I am a clinician working in Acute Medicine and lecture at Bangor University. I studied in Germany, where I did also complete my MD in Respiratory Pathophysiology. I have trained in England, Germany and Wales and have complemented this with work for Médecins Sans Frontières in Angola and fellowships in France and the US.

My group published the first peer-reviewed paper on Early Warning Scores and my research interest is safety of the deteriorating patient. I have completed an Improvement Science Fellowship with the Health Foundation to examine the contributions that patient could make to their own safety and host an annual conference on “Patient Powered Safety”.

Department of Anesthesia, Pain, and Perioperative Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine
Stanford, CA 94305

Geoff is a Professor of anesthesiology and intensive care at Stanford University and in the US Veterans Health care system.  He was an Associate Chair of the SCCM task force on deterioration and will begin his tenure as the President of the International Society of Rapid Response Systems at the conclusion of this conference.  His main academic focus is on improving the performance and delivery of medical care to critically ill patients.  This has led to work on better identifying deteriorating patients and developing one of the first METs in the United States.  The MET provides care to a dispersed medical campus and can apply point of care testing, echocardiography, invasive lines, and all modes of therapy wherever needed to stabilize a deteriorating patient.  Geoff has joined numerous international medical missions and is looking forward to learning more about the applicability of Rapid Response Systems to non-western health care systems.

Chair National deteriorating patient AI working group since 2022

Vicki Campbell is involved in Rapid Response Systems since 2003. Now, as an Intensive Care and Renal physician on the Sunshine Coast for the last 13 years, have gained an understanding of both the critical care and ward requirements of recognition and management of patient deterioration. As clinical lead of the Queensland Health Digital Early Warning Tool steering committee for the last 3 years, I am proud to be part of a team of patient-focused, state-wide visionary leaders and clinical and technical experts. We support evolving National Safety Standard requirements, and aspire to navigate the challenges of data management, AI in healthcare, heuristic optimisation, and successful implementation. We look forward to seeing the results of digital health innovation in providing better and safer health care for our community.

Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Research Centre (ANZIC-RC), School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University, Melbourne

Ms. Gemma Pound graduated from King’s College, London in 2006 and worked in a number of hospitals in the UK before emigrating to Australia in 2015. She has over 15 years experience as a Cardiorespiratory Physiotherapist and is currently undertaking her PhD at Monash University. Her clinical interests include early mobilisation and rehabilitation in intensive care, non-pharmacological management of delirium and the long-term outcomes of survivors of critical illness. Her PhD thesis focuses specifically on the survival, functional outcome and health-related quality of life of patients who experience in-hospital cardiac arrest

Tania is an Associate Charge Nurse Manager in Wellington ICU, New Zealand, and Chairperson of the New Zealand College of Critical Care Nurses (NZCCCN). Her career has spanned 25 years across New Zealand and England with a short stint in outback Australia.  

Ten years ago, motivated by the confronting reality of unnecessary waste at work , Tania was a founding member of Wellington ICU’s green group and now leads this team. Through her role with the New Zealand College of Critical Care Nurses, she has become involved with both the Australian and New Zealand ICU sustainabilty network. This has led to being involved with the development of the ANZICS Sustainability toolkit which has motivated Tania to collaborate nationally and internationally to reduce unnneccessary waste from ICUs.  

Tania is passionate about ensuring the nursing voice is heard, both within critical care and the public sphere and is motivated to contribute to the work that the NZCCCN does to have the value of nursing recognised widely and improving nursing working conditions. 

I am John Welch, RN, BSc Psychology, MSc Nursing 

 Consultant Nurse, Critical Care & Critical Care Outreach, University College London Hospitals  

 Honorary Clinical Lecturer, University College London 

 National Clinical Advisor, Acute Deterioration, NHS England 

  John set-up one of the first Critical Care Outreach services in the UK, was first Chair of the UK National Outreach Forum; and Programme Lead for Critical Care Outreach at the Department of Health Modernisation Agency 2002-2005. 

He was later Clinical Lead – for Deterioration, then Sepsis – of the University College London Partners Patient Safety Collaborative 2010-17, and President of the international Society for Rapid Response Systems, 2017-2019. 

John is currently National Clinical Advisor for acute deterioration at NHS England, sits on NHS England / NHS Improvement working groups leading the creation of new Enhanced Care Areas, and Co-Chairs the NHSE/I Patient Worry & Concern Task and Finish Group (under the national Acute Deterioration Board) developing clinician, patient and family worry and concern as means to improve recognition of deterioration, as well as the national Managing Deterioration Safety Improvement Programme Advisory Group, a US Society of Critical Care Medicine Taskforce, and the Royal College of Physicians National Early Warning Score Independent Advisory Group. 

Previously, he was UK clinical lead of the European Union funded Horizon 2020 ‘Nightingale’ programme ‘Connecting Patients and Carers using wearable sensor technology’. 

Lesley has spent over 30 years at the coal face in critical care and outreach; she believes emphatically that since their introduction, ‘Critical Care Outreach’ services and the introduction of ‘Early Warning Scores’ have made an inestimable contribution to the quality, safety and effectiveness of care for critically and acutely ill patients in hospital. Lesley also believes that it is only correct that critical care outreach teams are now being referred to as the ‘safety engines of our hospitals’ in the UK.  

Lesley was a member of the UK Royal College of Physicians ‘National Early Warning Score Development and Implementation Group’ and the ‘NEWS Review Group’ which published ‘NEWS2’.  

Lesley is a founding member of the International Society for Rapid Response Systems; is on the Board of Directors, the Advisory Committee and is the current President. She also had the privilege of serving as Chair of the UK National Outreach Forum (NOrF) between 2006 and 2010. She remains committed to providing vision, drive and facilitation to achieve the development of these organisations as recognised credible bodies representing and informing clinicians, patients and carers on all aspects of Critical Care Outreach Services and Rapid Response System’s both within the UK and internationally. 

Kerina is an Intensive Care Transitional Year Fellow working at the Gold Coast University Hospital.

She loves everything about Intensive Care Medicine and is always up for a chat, especially if it is about critical care research.

Recently, Kerina co-founded the Queensland Pathway Peer-to-Peer Support Programme (PPPSP) with the aims of:

• Ensuring intensive care trainees have access to support, mentoring, sponsorship, and coaching opportunities
• Equipping trainees with the knowledge and skills required to be safe and effective mentors

Outside of work, Kerina can often be found going on long rambling walks around the Gold Coast Hinterlands or enjoying the beach with her partner Karl and two kids, Magnus and Zoe

Mr Low Ting Jun is a registered nurse at the Intensive Care/High Dependency Unit,  Ng Teng Fong General Hospital of Singapore. With more than 8 years of experience in the intensive care unit, he specialises in caring for critically ill patients with complicated modalities of care such as renal replacement therapy, intra-aortic balloon pump, mechanical ventilator, invasive haemodynamic monitoring. 

He is also a team member of the ICU outreach nursing team. This project was started in 2018 with Dr Faheem Khan, Head of the Intensive Care Medicine and Advance Practice Nurses. In year 2019, he was awarded with Health Manpower Development Plan (HMDP) by Ministry of Health , Singapore, and he completed the medical emergency and ICU liaison nurse services programme across various institution under Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust in United Kingdom.

Elizabeth grew up in Northern NSW in a tiny town called Bonalbo. She has always been passionate about providing healthcare services to rural and regional Australia. Prior to becoming a doctor was a nurse and worked in Victoria and the Northern Territory. She has lived in Bunbury for the past three years and has been part of the Bunbury Doctors in Training Society (BDITS) helping to improve the well-being of doctors in training in Bunbury and surrounds. In the future, she hopes to provide high quality critical care services to country WA. When she is not at work she enjoys practicing yoga, cooking, the beach and everything South West WA has to offer.

Tali is a paediatric intensivist from The Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne, with an interest in clinical education, trainees mentoring and ICU culture. She is lead clinician for MET, PICU liaison for pre-operative assessment, and a CICM Second Part Paediatric Examination examiner. She completed the Masters of Clinical Education (The University of Melbourne), and is a CICM SOT and an active member of the education team of the PICU at The Royal Children’s hospital.

Paediatric intensivist, The Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne

Tali is a paediatric intensivist from The Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne, with an interest in clinical education, trainees mentoring and ICU culture. She is lead clinician for MET, PICU liaison for pre-operative assessment, and a CICM Second Part Paediatric Examination examiner. She completed the Masters of Clinical Education (The University of Melbourne), and is a CICM SOT and an active member of the education team of the PICU at The Royal Children’s hospital.

Prof. Johanna Westbrook is Director of the Centre for Health Systems and Safety Research, Australian Institute of Health Innovation, Macquarie University. She is internationally recognised for her research evaluating the effects of ICT in health care, which has led to significant advances in our understanding of how clinical information systems deliver (or fail to deliver) expected benefits. Her highly applied research has supported translation of this evidence into policy, practice, and IT system design changes. She presented to the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety regarding the contribution that ICT can make in improving quality. Prof Westbrook has recently been working with a large health care provider to evaluate a multi-hospital organisational culture change intervention designed to reduce unprofessional behaviour between hospital staff.

Prof Westbrook has received several awards for her research. In 2014 she was named Australian ICT professional of the year, in 2019 as the national research leader in the field of medical informatics and in 2022 she was awarded the Health Services Research Award by Research Australia and a Telstra Health Brilliant Women in Digital Health Award. Johanna has over 500 publications and been awarded >$50M in research grants. In 2019 she received the Elizabeth Blackburn Investigator Award from the NHMRC. In 2020 Westbrook was appointed as a Co-Director of the Safety, Quality and Informatics Leadership program, by the Harvard Medical School.

David is an Intensive Care Specialist at The Alfred Hospital in Melbourne and Chairman of the Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Society (ANZICS) Centre for Outcome and Resource Evaluation (CORE). He is a medical advisor to DonateLife in Victoria, an Adjunct Clinical Professor with Monash University, the Vice-President of ANZICS and recently stepped down as Clinical Lead for the Safer Care Victoria Critical Care Clinical Network. His interests include ICU outcome monitoring, healthcare system measurement severity of illness assessment, organ donation, lung transplantation and ECMO.

Lindsay is the Deputy Chief Nurse at South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and prior to this was the Nurse Consultant of Critical Care Services. She continues to be the Trust lead for the Acutely Ill Patient workstream and the CNIO.  Lindsay concurrently progressed academically, completing a Diploma in Nursing, Advanced Critical Care Course, BSc (hons) Managing Health Care Delivery and MSc in Health Sciences. She is in her final year of her Professional Doctorate, entitled, ‘An action research study into how ward based clinicians enhance recognition and response to the acutely unwell or deteriorating adult hospitalised patient’.

During her career Lindsay has led on a number of organisational projects and service improvements including the Hospital @ Night initiative, e-observations and assessments, clinical noting, and educational programmes often related to the acutely ill patient. Lindsay has got a keen interest in supporting workflows to enable our most vulnerable patients to remain safe within hospital settings and enhance their care. She has facilitated the introduction of Critical Care Outreach across multiple sites and is a proud advisory member of the International Society of Rapid Response Systems.

Richard entered nursing in 1992, progressed to Nursing Education and Clinical Nurse Specialist predominantly for Critical care areas.

He has been practising as a Nurse Consultant, in Germany, KSA and NZ, for quality improvement and project management for the last 10 years.

Richard was involved in hospital process improvement projects in more than 10 countries, including Australia, Denmark, Spain, Belgium and more

Sarah is a palliative care physician with a long-term interest in the intersection between acute and intensive care with palliative care. She works at the Austin Hospital in Melbourne and has been acting head of unit for over two years.  The Austin has a very busy inpatient palliative care unit, with nearly 1000 admissions a year, as well as a busy consult service and expanding outreach service.

Frances Mortimer is Medical Director of The Centre for Sustainable Healthcare (CSH) in Oxford, UK, where she has led the development of their innovative Sustainable Specialties programme, which combines research with practical action to improve patient care at a lower environmental and social cost. Frances first identified CSH’s four principles of Sustainable Clinical Practice and developed the “SusQI” framework for incorporating sustainability into quality improvement in healthcare.

Until 2011, Dr. Mortimer continued part time clinical work in the Oxford Kidney Unit, having left specialist training in renal medicine in 2008 to work in sustainable healthcare. She studied medicine at Oxford University and at the Royal Free & University College London Medical School, graduating in 2003 before working and training for five years in the UK National Health Service

Dr Mark Nicholls is dual specialist in respiratory and intensive care medicine. His subspecialty interests include infection control within intensive care, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), intensive care heart and lung transplantation, and ventricular assist devices.

Dr Nicholls also has a special interest in resource-limited intensive care and is particularly interested in intensive care in low–middle income countries. To this end, Dr Nicholls is a volunteer for Open Heart International, an Australian humanitarian agency providing healthcare and specialised surgery to those living in developing countries. He has also worked and taught in Tanzania and Papua New Guinea.

Dr Nicholls is a Senior Conjoint Lecturer at the University of New South Wales and a Senior Lecturer at the University of Notre Dame