The ANZICS Education Committee oversees, guides and supports the education and training offerings provided by the Society, ensuring their ongoing evaluation for quality improvement. Reporting to the ANZICS Board, the Committee aims to promote best evidence and provide relevant professional development opportunities to target the needs of members.
The Committee’s purpose is to:
- Provide advice to the ANZICS Board on matters related to education and training of Society members in the form of reports, recommendations and advice.
- Increase the strategic focus of ANZICS to the education-related needs of its members, the structure of activities and the capacity of the organisation to deliver education initiatives.
- Provide educational support to all members, particularly those in regional and remote areas across Australia and New Zealand, employing a variety of blended learning approaches e.g., face-to-face meetings, virtual meetings, webinars, podcasts and self-directed online learning activities.
- Support ANZICS at a bi-national and regional level through:
- Offering the expertise, experience, contacts and capacity of the Education Committee to support meetings and/ education events e.g., the ANZICS ASM.
- Anticipating the education and training needs of Society members, identifying gaps and/or deficiencies in available education offerings and exploring new opportunities for future development.
- Promote achievements and share the professional learnings.
- Increase Society engagement with intensive care trainees through the provision of relevant education and training programs, ensuring standards are met for continuing professional development e.g., a mentorship program/foundational program for new consultants.
- Diversify educational offerings through proactively engaging with external organisations and identify content experts to present at Society meetings.
- Ensure viability of educational offerings through fiscal responsibility.
Dr Timothy ”Dr Tim” Chimunda is a Critical Care specialist and Director at Goulburn Valley Health in Victoria. Who has a passion for innovation that, has helped health care services to optimise delivery of critical care by implementing innovative quality improvement based strategies. This is backed by research publication in the field. He has a special interest in Telehealth science, Innovation, Big data, Artificial Intelligence analytics, and meaningful patient centred outcomes. He employs a collaborative model of leadership and believes in outside the box solutions.
Dr Tim, has trained and worked as a Critical Care physician for over 10years in 4 different countries. He has held several Clinical directorship positions in both Intensive Care and Emergency medicine. During this course he was the Clinical lead for Telehealth critical care services in regional victorian healthcare service. There he successfully implemented, collaborated, and embedded a Telehealth, Telegovernance, Tele-mentoring, and Tele-education program.
Having completed his clinical and research fellowship from UoFT he returned to Australia and has held multiple Clinical Director of Crit Care Research. Aligned with this activity was his key role in prompting regional health research, relating to effective implementation of Quality improvement work, initiating Big data research in the form of a Datathons. He has overseen step into research programs that have led to PhD supervision., He is a former Gardner King recipient and now focuses on Digital health integrating AI techniques to improve health care. He is the founder and Executive Director for Innovate Crit Care consultancy.
He has over the past 15 years mentored junior doctors and held a Post Graduate Hub director position with the University of Monash. He has an avid desire to see IMGs and Junior doctor’s welfare upheld.
Dr Tim enjoys a good sci-fi movie, Golf and an adventure or two!
He is currently one of the State COVID19 cluster leads overseeing the Victorian Clinical and operational implementation of strategic responses to the C19 pandemic.
Shekar is a Senior Intensive Care Specialist and researcher at the Prince Charles Hospital in Brisbane. Shekar is routinely involved in teaching trainees and contributes to critical care educational activities around the world.
Shekar is passionate about addressing the global variability in intensive care outcomes through education and development of validated quality metrics for critical care education. He strongly believes in the power of education in improving patient outcomes globally, be it through targeted use of high-cost, low-volume therapies such as extracorporeal life support (ECLS) or through innovative, relatively lower cost interventions in the resource poor settings.
Through the Critical Care Education Foundation, Mumbai, India and the International Critical Care Academic Council, Shekar is involved in developing online critical care education resources for the resource limited settings. His ongoing research program “The Budget ICU Project” aims to improve critical care access in developing world through low cost, yet effective intensive care solutions for both clinical care and simulation education. He is the global research lead for Extracorporeal Life Support Organisation (ELSO) Education Taskforce and is a
member of the Asia-Pacific ELSO Education Committee. In these roles, Shekar and his team are using validated research tools to develop standardised curricula, online educational content, quality/process metrics and credentialing tools to ensure provision of high quality ECLS care that can benefit more patients around the world. He is the Course Director of the Prince Charles Hospital ECMO Course.
Dr Abhijit Laha (MBBS, MD Anesthesiology, FCICM, EDIC)
I am a Consultant Intensivist at Royal Perth Hospital in Western Australia. I have a special interest in medical education, and I am routinely involved with various teaching activities in Intensive Care Medicine. I believe, basic science is the backbone of clinical medicine and medical research. I organize statewide annual ICU Primary education program in Western Australia. I have recently joined as a CICM First Part examiner. I have an Anesthetic background and I am quite passionate about teaching advanced airway management skills. I organize and direct the Beyond BASIC – Airway Management Course in Western Australia.
