Saving Lives – the evolution of critical illness and intensive pain

Professor Julian Bion from the School of Health and Population Sciences gives his Inaugural Lecture.

Julian Bion is the Professor of Intensive Care Medicine at the University of Birmingham, and honorary consultant in intensive care medicine at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital Birmingham. He is an active front-line clinician undertaking full clinical duties in the largest intensive care unit in Europe, working with 32 consultant colleagues and 400 nurses, as well as allied health professionals delivering care to more than 2000 critically ill patients each year.

Since 1987, he has been responsible for undergraduate training in resuscitation and intensive care, and has developed national standards for undergraduate training in the care of the acutely ill patient. At postgraduate level he was the first Regional Advisor in Intensive Care Medicine for the West Midlands, a member of the Intercollegiate Board for Training in Intensive Care Medicine, and led the development of the first competency-based ICM training programme in 2000. He is an elected member of Council of the Royal College of Anaesthetists (2007-2012), and was chair of the RCA Professional Standards Committee. In 2010 he was elected the Foundation Dean of the new Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine for the UK, establishing intensive care medicine as a primary speciality.

Internationally, he was elected UK representative on the council of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine, and elected President of the ESICM by the international membership from 2004-6. He set up, and was the first chairman of, the European Board of Intensive Care Medicine (2006-2009). He established, led, and is now the research director of the CoBaTrICE programme, an EU Leonardo-funded collaboration which has developed an international competency-based training programme for intensive care medicine now fully adopted by the national training programmes of 10 countries worldwide including the UK.

His research publications and interests include the pathogenesis and prevention of multiple organ failure, human factors research, quality and safety improvement, and improving patient outcomes through professional education and training. He has obtained personally or in collaboration £9.6M in research grants. He has been a member of the Surviving Sepsis Campaign Guidelines Committee since 2005, producing international guidelines on the management of septic shock. In 2004 he established an EU-FP6-funded European collaboration to determine genetic predisposition to mortality from septic shock (GenOSept), now in the analytical phase. He is a member of the national steering committees of the HTA-funded ProMISe study (protocolised management of sepsis, ICNARC), and the Health Foundation’s Safer Clinical Systems evaluation programme (University of Leicester). He was the senior clinical lead for the National Patient Safety Agency’s DoH-funded project, Matching Michigan, successfully reducing blood stream infections from central venous catheters in ICUs in England. He is now leading a national approach to integrating clinical research and behavioural sciences with education and professional development to improve the quality and reliability of care of acutely ill hospitalised patients.

In 2004 Professor Bion received the Shubin-Weil international award for excellence from the Society of Critical Care Medicine in the USA. In 2008 he was awarded honorary life memberships of the Czech Society of Intensive Care Medicine, and of the UK Intensive Care Society in 2009.

This lecture is open to all.

Cost: Free of charge