Aug 23, 2017
Do you think your procedural skills are more important than your
ability to lead and to mentor?
Do you have a department head who talks about your personal
wellness with you?
How do you maintain and improve your skills in leading a family
meeting?
Professor Brian Cuthbertson believes that our non-technical
skills, those human factor aspects like leadership, mentoring,
communication and leading meetings with patient’s relatives, are
more important than our clinical procedural skills as we evolve in
our careers. But do we talk enough about them? In this episode
Brian discusses several of these important non-technical skills
giving some powerful insights as a highly experienced clinician and
leader in the field of intensive care.
Brian is Chief of the Department of Critical Care Medicine at
Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and Professor in the
Interdepartmental Division of Critical Care Medicine at the
University of Toronto in Toronto, Canada. He is also an Honorary
Professor of Critical Care Medicine at the University of Aberdeen
and an Honorary Professorial Fellow at the George Institute of
Global Health in Sydney. Brian’s research interests include
improving outcomes from critical illness and major surgery. He has
over 135 peer-reviewed publications and $17 million of research
grants as well as playing a leading role in a number of key
clinical guidelines.
Brian was very keen to talk about how much he values the human
factors we all need to concentrate on to be the best we can be.
Some of the main topics of discussion include:
- Brian’s love for intensive care, which began with the machines
and is now much more about humans - The benefits he has realised from having high-class mentors in
different areas - His role as a mentor to others and how there needs to be some
structure to this relationship - How leadership at the bedside is like conducting an orchestra
where everyone needs to be heard - The need for senior trainees to stay in charge of resuscitation
teams even when the consultant arrives - How being a good team-player often requires us to drop our
egos - The value of good habits at the start of a ward round
- The need for department heads to address their team member’s
personal wellness requirements to maximise vitality and
balance - The importance of family members being at the bedside on
clinical rounds to represent the values of the patient - The fact that the highest level skill we can have is the
ability to lead a family meeting, especially in culturally-diverse
cities - Placing the patient’s values and needs at the centre of any
inter-professional discussions, particularly differences in
opinion - The requirement for greater academic study of all of these
non-technical skills
With this podcast, and the previous episodes, please help me in
my quest to improve patient care, in ICUs all round the world, by
inspiring all of us to bring our best selves to work to more
masterfully interact with our patients, their families, ourselves
and our fellow healthcare professionals so that we can achieve the
most satisfactory outcomes for all. It would be much appreciated if
you could help to spread the word by simply emailing your
colleagues or posting on social media.
If you wish to send a comment or respond to something Brian said
on this episode, feel free to email me andrew@masteringintensivecare.com,
leave a comment on the Mastering Intensive Care podcast page on
LITFL or on Facebook, or post on twitter using
#masteringintensivecare.
Please take the very best care of your patients, their families
and your colleagues. And above all, consider that taking care of
yourself might actually be the best thing you can do for your
patients.
I hope you have a great week.
____________________________________________________________________________________________
Show
notes (people, organisations, resources or links
mentioned in the episode)
Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre: http://sunnybrook.ca/
Brian Cuthbertson:
http://sunnybrook.ca/team/member.asp?t=17&page=2780&m=407
Malcolm Fisher:
http://www.nslhd.health.nsw.gov.au/newsevents/Pages/MalcolmFisherICU.aspx
Nigel Webster: https://www.abdn.ac.uk/ims/profiles/n.r.webster
Marion Campbell: https://www.abdn.ac.uk/hsru/people/m.k.campbell/
Mentorship in Academic Medicine – Author Sharon Strauss:
http://www.mentorshipacademicmedicine.com/
Atul Gawande: http://atulgawande.com/
