Latest / The STA Clinician Podcast / Ep.302 'Sepsis: Critical Care Journey & Post Intensive Care Syndrome (PICS)' with Alanna Forrester
Transcript
- 0:00You're listening to the STA Clinician Podcast, connecting clinicians across healthcare.
- 0:20Association podcast, formerly known as the Sports Therapy Association podcast.
- 0:23Geez, my voice is not normally this hunky. It's just got man flu again.
- 0:28And this episode is being recorded live on the Sports Therapy Association YouTube
- 0:32channel and Facebook page at eight o'clock UK time on a Tuesday.
- 0:37So very shortly in this episode entitled Sepsis, the critical care journey and
- 0:42post-intensive care syndrome picks, I will shortly be joined by special guest
- 0:46Alana Forrester, who is clinical nurse lead for critical care outreach.
- 0:50Alana is going to be discussing the physical and psychological impact survivors
- 0:54face following critical illness,
- 0:56including muscle wasting, severe fatigue, and deconditioning,
- 0:59and how you, the listener, soft tissue therapists and movement professionals
- 1:03can play a part in supporting long recovery.
- 1:07Before that, as always, I'd like to give a big thank you to my guest from last
- 1:11week's episode, Understanding Stomas, A Guide for Soft Tissue Therapists,
- 1:16in which I was joined by special guest Jenny Jones, a community stoma nurse based in Norfolk.
- 1:22In this episode, we look at what a stoma is, the three main types of stomas
- 1:27and the impacts stoma surgery can have on a patient's overall quality of life.
- 1:32That's episode 301 of the STA Clinician Podcast available as always on all popular
- 1:38podcast apps and the Sports Therapy Association YouTube channel.
- 1:43If you have joined us live, then thank you very much. As always,
- 1:46you are able to ask questions to our guests directly. And if you do ask a question,
- 1:50I can bring it up on the screen.
- 1:52People are coming through already. Brian, how are you doing?
- 1:54Nice to see you. Thanks for joining us.
- 1:56Gary Benson, founder of the STA is in the house as well. Hi,
- 2:01Gary, and everybody else. And if you listen to the podcast, then thank you very much.
- 2:05It means you're listening to the recording. If you do have a question.
- 2:09Then you're free to go to YouTube and put it down there.
- 2:11And we do track the YouTube comments so we can get back to our guests and ask
- 2:15them questions. So don't feel the conversation is over. That'd be ridiculous.
- 2:18With 300 episodes, no way we have more than a week's shelf life.
- 2:22Do use YouTube if you have a question.
- 2:24Cecily Hislop has just joined us as well. Says, evening all,
- 2:27too busy recovering from bird flu for sympathy. Bird flu.
- 2:31Okay. But take care though. Thanks, Cecily. I think there's sympathy there somewhere.
- 2:35And Steve Kirby is back with us as well. And thanks to Steve Kirby for putting
- 2:40these episodes together as this month is sepsis month.
- 2:43And Steve, who has lived experience of that has helped put last week's and this
- 2:48episode together so hi Steve thank you very much and thank you for sharing your experience,
- 2:54right then let's start tonight's episode sepsis the critical care journey and
- 2:59post-intensive care syndrome with my special guest Alana Forrester.
- 3:07Hey, Alana, how are you doing? Hello, I'm very well. Thank you. Lovely to be here.
- 3:12I appreciate it very much, sir. And there's Steve Kirby, you're still on the
- 3:16window there. Steve is who brought us together. And Jenny, you know Jenny as
- 3:19well, don't you? Have you worked with Jenny?
- 3:21Yes, I worked with Jenny for years, so it was nice to see her face on last week's episode.
- 3:27Thanks, fantastic. I do appreciate both of you giving up your time to join us.
- 3:32And it's a topic, the feedback we've had so far has just been great,
- 3:35because it's something which isn't.
- 3:37Is one of those conditions that isn't just talked about enough on shows like this.
- 3:42It's always kind of Achilles and patellofemoral pain syndrome and ITP syndrome.
- 3:45And we forget about the huge amount of population who come in affected by something
- 3:50which, you know, we're not trained in. So I really appreciate you giving up your time.
- 3:53Absolutely, no problem at all. I suppose if we jump straight into it,
- 3:57maybe if you could start by giving our listeners a little bit about your role
- 4:00as clinical nurse lead for critical care outreach and how that links maybe to
- 4:04tonight's topic of sepsis.
- 4:06Lovely so yes so critical care outreach is a kind of service that is available
- 4:11in most hospitals these days through throughout the uk we are a group of specialist nurses usually,
- 4:20many have a background in intensive care nursing but we take nurses from other
- 4:24kind of acute backgrounds so my
- 4:26team some of them worked in the emergency department or in acute medicine,
- 4:30we work in a role where we cover all wards throughout the hospital.
- 4:35So we'll take referrals from nurses, doctors, anybody out in the ward who has
- 4:40got a patient that they're looking after
- 4:42and they think this patient looks like they're deteriorating and that might
- 4:46be that they've noticed something in their observations or they just kind of
- 4:50have got a bit of a not good feeling about them.
- 4:52They'll give us a call and say, can you come and have a look at this patient?
- 4:55And we support kind of clinically to optimise them, try and prevent them being
- 5:01admitted to critical care.
- 5:03But where they do need to be admitted to critical care, we do a lot of the transfers
- 5:07up there. And my background is in intensive care nursing.
- 5:11And another really key part of my role that is particularly relevant tonight
- 5:16is that we also support all the patients who are stepped down from critical care,
- 5:20to the ward because they are a very vulnerable group of patients who need a
- 5:25lot of additional support,
- 5:27and are also at risk of deteriorating again.
- 5:29So we follow up every patient at our hospital who goes from critical care to
- 5:34the ward and trying to make sure that we assess them holistically and make sure
- 5:38that they've got the right support.
- 5:40I'm not an expert in the kind of longer term rehabilitation after critical care,
- 5:44but obviously my experience of working with this patient group kind of gives me an insight of,
- 5:49the journey that they've been through because I've witnessed that with following
- 5:53a lot of patients through critical
- 5:54care and how that can kind of impact on things further down the line.
- 5:57And also, specifically in relation
- 6:00to sepsis, we obviously do a lot of managing sepsis out on the wards.
- 6:05And we also provide a lot of education around sepsis and look at how it's managed
- 6:10in the hospital and optimizing it. Amazing. Thank you very much for that.
- 6:15I suppose really as well, we should, not everybody probably understands what
- 6:19sepsis is. So could you give us a definition of that?
- 6:22Yeah, absolutely. So yes, sepsis is, I think it can almost be used quite broadly.
- 6:29So it is useful to kind of nail it down to exactly what it is.
- 6:32So if I give you the fancy definition and then I'll kind of break it down a little bit.
- 6:36So it's characterized as a life-threatening organ dysfunction due to a dysregulated
- 6:41host response to infection.
- 6:43So what does that mean in reality so sepsis can occur in anybody who's got an
- 6:49infection so not everybody who has an infection is septic or will go on to become septic,
- 6:58so most people will develop an infection and they might just.
- 7:02Fight that off themselves naturally or they might need a few days of antibiotics
- 7:06from their GP and they'll fight that off but in a small group of patients and
- 7:10some are higher risk than others, though it's not completely understood as to
- 7:15why some people will develop sepsis.
- 7:17That infection goes on to cause sepsis and you get a kind of overwhelming immune
- 7:23and inflammatory response throughout the whole body and you get this kind of dysregulation.
- 7:29So normally if I've got an infection or an injury, you get an inflammatory response to that area.
- 7:35In sepsis, that inflammatory response is kind of out of control and throughout the whole body.
- 7:41And that starts to cause a whole kind of cascade of problems.
- 7:46So you get widespread inflammation, your blood vessels become very leaky and
- 7:52more permeable. You'll start to drop your blood pressure. And that then.
- 7:58Can go on to cause septic shock, which can start to then damage your organs at the other end of that.
- 8:05So pretty serious stuff then we're talking about. Yes. I mean,
- 8:09it's, you know, I don't want to, you get kind of different levels.
- 8:13So some people will have, be developing a kind of what looks like a septic response
- 8:19and we'll give them some antibiotics and they'll respond really well to that
- 8:22and get better quite rapidly.
- 8:25Other people will develop sepsis and become overwhelmingly very unwell very, very rapidly.
- 8:34And it's not particularly well understood as to why some people will get that,
- 8:40overwhelming response.
- 8:41I can think of a patient I saw once many years ago who had just got a strep
- 8:47A throat infection. And most people will get a strep A throat infection.
- 8:51They'll fight it off. They might not even need any antibiotics.
- 8:53They'll have a bit of sore throat for a few days, get better.
- 8:56And then you'll get somebody who gets the same infection from the same bacteria
- 8:59and they just become overwhelmingly septic and become very very unwell and there's
- 9:05there's a lot of ongoing research to kind of understand that,
- 9:08you know there are potentially some genetic factors that make you more at risk
- 9:11things like if you're on immunosuppressant drugs or.
- 9:16For example chemotherapy or something that suppresses your immune system you're
- 9:20more at risk pregnant women are more at risk very young children,
- 9:25but it's yeah it's not entirely understood as to why some people become so unwell
- 9:30and not everybody who develops sepsis will go on to be very very unwell but
- 9:33a small kind of subgroup will.
- 9:36So if we don't really know, thank you for that. So if we don't really know what
- 9:40causes it or why some people are prone to it and others, then what sort of precautions,
- 9:45because you mentioned like you're in education, what precautions do hospitals
- 9:48take to try to avoid it from happening?
- 9:51Yes. So what we try to do is we kind of, the Sepsis Trust have done a lot of
- 9:56work promoting kind of think sepsis. So every patient who is in a hospital,
- 10:01we regularly monitor all their vital signs.
- 10:06So anytime that those vital signs kind of fluctuate outside of what we would
- 10:10expect as normal, we encourage and we teach people to think sepsis and they
- 10:14should be what we call screened for sepsis.
- 10:16So sepsis screening just involves a clinician taking the time to think, could this be sepsis?
- 10:22And anytime that you answer to that question, yes, this could be sepsis,
- 10:27then that then triggers some more interventions, a review from the medical team
- 10:32and a more kind of comprehensive of look at could this,
- 10:36you know, do we need to start on antibiotics?
- 10:39And in those subgroup of patients, which we call red flag sepsis,
- 10:43when they're showing really clear signs.
- 10:46Will then kind of triggers a set of actions, the main one of which is getting
- 10:51antibiotics into them within an hour,
- 10:54which is our key target for those kind of red flag patients,
- 10:57because that's been shown significantly improve the mortality from sepsis.
- 11:04Okay. Is this something that has been improved over the years then?
- 11:09Was there a time when people didn't really look for it as much and now it's
- 11:12something which is much more?
- 11:14Yes, certainly in my own experience. I mean, I think I've been nursing nearly
- 11:1920 years. I know I don't look that old. Impossible.
- 11:22I know, everybody's shocked. And I think it has really grown in,
- 11:28And I think the Sepsis Trust have done a lot of work to kind of promote this
- 11:31and put it at the forefront of people's minds and just make sure that we are taking the time.
- 11:38To think about it and considering it just because it is so important to get
- 11:42those treatments in in a timely manner excellent we'll look at some of the,
- 11:48signs for it which you mentioned already but give us an idea before we do that
- 11:52what sort of instance are we talking about how many people in the uk,
- 11:56will get sepsis so i think the sepsis trust says around 226 000 cases that's
- 12:04very specific i definitely haven't got that written down in front of me.
- 12:08But that compares to around kind of a hundred thousand admissions from a heart
- 12:11attack per year so we're talking,
- 12:14you know a quite quite a significant number of people and then it accounts for
- 12:18about five percent of emergency admissions to hospital,
- 12:21and they say it's about five deaths an hour claimed by sepsis so this it's a
- 12:27significant problem that um,
- 12:31and that's you know partly why i'm here today to kind of raise awareness around it.
- 12:36That is, yeah, quite scary. That's quite a lot, isn't it? And out of those cases,
- 12:41how many does that mean out of those 226, I think you said 1,000,
- 12:45how many of those do cause death?
- 12:49So if you look on the sepsis shrubs website, it reports as around 20%.
- 12:54However, I think they're subdividing that into the most severely septic patients.
- 13:01So we're talking about when patients have developed,
- 13:04septic shock and are becoming very severely unwell and it's hard to kind of
- 13:09stratify it beyond that and give a very clear figure of everybody because as
- 13:14with many disease processes you really get a kind of,
- 13:18not everybody is going to fit into that most severe category of sepsis many
- 13:23patients will show that kind of response will treat them they'll respond really
- 13:26well to the treatment and so it's very variable and it's difficult to put an exact number on.
- 13:31Oh, that makes sense. That makes sense. Right. We're going to bring some,
- 13:34we've got some screenshots taken from sepsistrust.org, which is a great website
- 13:40that on the show notes, it gives you loads of information.
- 13:42If you are a therapist or practitioner, you want to read up on it,
- 13:45then I suggest you go to sepsistrust.org. But we're going to put some on because
- 13:48we're live on YouTube and Facebook. We'll put some up on the screen as well now.
- 13:52For those of you who like the visuals, again, obviously, sepsistrust is trying
- 13:56to raise awareness of this. And it's not kind of scaremongering,
- 14:00it's just fact. And it's got a screenshot here saying 48,000 people died of
- 14:04sepsis last year in the UK.
- 14:07Together we can change this.
- 14:09How does that compare to kind of, I mean, you said, did you say that 5% of emergency
- 14:15admissions are because of this?
- 14:17Yeah, so it's a significant proportion of emergency admissions to hospital.
- 14:21And if you compare that to something like lung cancer, bowel cancer,
- 14:25which obviously gets a lot of coverage, rightly so, that it's more than all those combined.
- 14:34I think it is important to caveat that because we're not I'm not a massive fan of,
- 14:40pitting kind of one disease off against the other because actually some of the
- 14:44people who die of sepsis will be people who are suffering from,
- 14:50a cancer who are then having treatment that suppresses their immune system and
- 14:56they may go on actually to die of sepsis unfortunately So I don't want to go
- 15:00too heavily down the kind of,
- 15:03you know, these disease processes are often very complex and we're trying to
- 15:07balance lots of different needs for patients. But it does just work.
- 15:12Emphasise that this is a significant problem. And not all of those deaths will
- 15:17be preventable because they will be people who are already unwell with other
- 15:22illness. And unfortunately, it then becomes very difficult to treat sepsis.
- 15:26But there are a good proportion of those where actually, by making sure that
- 15:32we're managing it properly, we can make sure that as many people as possible survive.
- 15:37And that kind of leads importantly onto the next slide, which is recognising
- 15:41potential signs that you should either go to a or contact your doctor which
- 15:45you're going to bring up on the screen now because i'm guessing that
- 15:48as with many of these systemic issues catch it earlier and you're more likely
- 15:52to be able to deal with it properly and safely,
- 15:55absolutely getting antibiotics in early is really really important however i
- 16:01do have to emphasize at the same time Not everybody who's got an infection will
- 16:06go on to develop sepsis and we can't, I don't want to,
- 16:12kind of make people too scared that I need to take antibiotics immediately for every infection.
- 16:16Most people will have a mild infection, their body will respond to that,
- 16:21they may need some antibiotics to treat it and they'll get better.
- 16:25So not every patient who has an infection will go on to be septic.
- 16:30So the idea of these particular signs are to help you identify when actually...
- 16:38We're moving beyond just having an infection and actually this is looking like
- 16:43this patient's septic and in those instances you do need very urgent medical attention.
- 16:49So it's trying to find those real kind of red flag signs.
- 16:52So slurred speech or confusion can be a really sensitive marker of sepsis.
- 17:01So if you see, if I have a patient, particularly a young patient who's normally
- 17:06very cognitively with it and they are developing a new confusion,
- 17:10even if all their other parameters at the moment okay that's a really worrying
- 17:14sign so that's something to look out for extreme shivering or muscle pain can be an indicator,
- 17:22passing no urine in a day or i'd probably say just passing very low amounts
- 17:26of urine in a day could be an indicator of developing sepsis because what happens
- 17:31is you're then not perfusing your kidneys very well and they're not producing
- 17:35the normal amount of urine.
- 17:36So anybody who's got that symptom, I would say, you know, you need to be presenting
- 17:40to ED immediately. Severe breathlessness.
- 17:44And then it feels like you're going to die. So what patients report is,
- 17:48I've never felt this unwell. I feel really unwell. I've got this kind of sense of impending doom.
- 17:55And, you know, that can be, should be taken very, very seriously.
- 17:59And skin being mottled or discoloured can be an indicator.
- 18:04And it's really important to just emphasise and think about people with darker
- 18:08skin tones, that that might be a slightly harder sign to pick up.
- 18:12So you can look for changes in the skin, particularly in the palms of the hands
- 18:16or the kind of forearms. It might be a little bit easier to see in people with the darker skin tones.
- 18:20So where you think you've got an infection, you can seek support through the
- 18:25NHS 111 service or your GP.
- 18:28But when actually you're showing these signs and you're concerned specifically
- 18:31about sepsis, then that's where you should.
- 18:34In really severe cases, calling 999, you know, may be appropriate if you're
- 18:38showing a number of these signs.
- 18:40And I actually recently had a little girl who I looked after when she was two
- 18:45who had meningitis and was septic from that.
- 18:49And actually, they'd called 999 and she'd been given antibiotics by the paramedic
- 18:54crew because they can give it for where it's clear sepsis.
- 18:58And that was probably the reason that she survived is because she'd got that
- 19:02urgence. So where somebody is rapidly deteriorating...
- 19:06Get really urgent attention or present an ED and say, look, I'm concerned this could be sepsis.
- 19:12While I'm talking about that, it's important just to talk about children as
- 19:16well, because they might present slightly differently.
- 19:19So what the sepsis is just about, talk about for that is breathing very fast,
- 19:23any fits or convulsions, looking mottled, bluish or pale, which is similar.
- 19:29And once again, the same considerations around people with darker skin tones.
- 19:34And they emphasise a rash that doesn't fade when you press it.
- 19:37So they talk about the glass test, which is the easiest way to see it.
- 19:41So if actually you've got a, it'll look like a kind of purpley rash and when
- 19:45you roll a glass on it, it doesn't blanch or go away. It remains purple underneath
- 19:50the pressure is a real sign.
- 19:53And just check your children all over for that. I remember, I can't remember
- 19:59his name now, a very famous author who wrote, we're going on a bear hunt,
- 20:02I forget his name, but his son, unfortunately, died of sepsis.
- 20:08And he said that it presented kind of with a rash under the arms.
- 20:11So just check your children all over if you're really worried about them for
- 20:15this rash and it can develop. And it's a horrible thing to see.
- 20:18Feeling very lethargic or difficult to wake for children and feeling kind of
- 20:23abnormally cold to touch. And then in very young children, it's kind of additional
- 20:27signs where they're not feeding, repeated vomiting or that low urine output.
- 20:33I see Steve's just added in the chat that he can remember about the breathlessness
- 20:38and that feeling that he was going to die and that things moved very quickly.
- 20:42So for us as clinicians and for anybody listening to our patients and about
- 20:47how they're feeling and that they're.
- 20:50Telling us that they're feeling very unwell and we should be responding to that
- 20:54and taking it very seriously.
- 20:56I guess that there's, I'm looking through those symptoms and there's a crossover
- 21:01with other potential kind of systemic issues going on as well.
- 21:05But even if it's something else, it's still, there was a solution that would be A&E important now.
- 21:10You know, if it was a stroke or something or if it's meningitis,
- 21:12the same kind of stuff, you're still going to end up, act now, get to A&E.
- 21:16Yeah, exactly. Like any of these, you know, We don't want to overrun any departments,
- 21:22but they are there for a reason. And actually, any of these signs would be significantly
- 21:27worrying and warrant presenting at ED.
- 21:30So, you know, I don't, in terms of these specific symptoms, if you've got any
- 21:35of those, they will then consider whether it's sepsis. But as you say,
- 21:38there could be other things going on that need urgent attention.
- 21:43Amazing. Really good. And, and there's a, there's a, I was getting confused
- 21:48in mnemonic and acronym.
- 21:49I think it's a, I don't know, but sepsis is broken down into those different
- 21:54identifiers. And there's a nice way of remembering that if you go to,
- 21:58again, the website, sepsistrust.org, it's something you may want to print out
- 22:02or just familiarize yourself with.
- 22:04And I'm listening to this and I'm thinking, obviously as a soft tissue therapist
- 22:08or sports therapist, whatever, you're very unlikely to have somebody coming into your clinic.
- 22:13I mean, it could happen, but these are things which I think,
- 22:17especially in the private care industry where you're spending maybe an hour
- 22:21with clients, massage therapists, you're talking so much and you share so much information.
- 22:26And we said it's time and time before, this is where you can help educate the
- 22:29public so much. You're not diagnosing, you're not going outside your scope of
- 22:32practice, but the same way as you talk about the signs for possible stroke or something.
- 22:37And that could be someone's father, mother, daughter, child,
- 22:39cousin, whatever, boss, somebody at work.
- 22:42So I think there's so much we can do as therapists if we just educate ourselves
- 22:48a little bit with this because people will listen to us because they trust us. Yeah, absolutely.
- 22:53Absolutely. Anything that can kind of raise that awareness and get people thinking
- 22:56about it is really, really important.
- 22:59Great. And again, Steve, yeah, thank you for sharing your experience there.
- 23:04And it shows as well the importance of listening to the people in front of you.
- 23:07We hear it a lot, don't we, for heart attack, I think, that impending sense of doom.
- 23:11And we've talked a lot about it on first day courses and that.
- 23:15But unless you actually talk and listen to your client and watch out for diagnostic
- 23:20overshadowing, I think they're just overreacting because they're always like
- 23:22this. You've got to listen and take it seriously.
- 23:25Really important. And Cecily has got a question here for later.
- 23:28We don't wait for later, Cecily, when it's a question from you.
- 23:31Can patients suffer from a long sepsis, similarly to how people have long COVID? many things.
- 23:37That's a really good question, Cecily.
- 23:41I'd say in many ways, yes, though I wouldn't think you'd necessarily particularly call it that.
- 23:49But we're going to go on to talk a little bit about post-intensive care syndrome
- 23:54and the long-term impact.
- 23:57So long COVID has some very specific symptoms related to the COVID itself.
- 24:04For example, the impact on the lungs and the breathing and the long-term breathing problems.
- 24:10But actually, a big part of long COVID is also about the impact of being very,
- 24:17very unwell and in critical care and being very unwell.
- 24:21And that will be very similar to somebody who has experienced sepsis and been
- 24:27very, very and well and had a,
- 24:30prolonged admission to critical care will have a really, it will take them a
- 24:35very long time to recover and we'll be able to perhaps give a little bit more
- 24:38insight into that as we talk about kind of post-intensive care syndrome.
- 24:42Great question, Cecily. Thank you for that. I was thinking of that earlier on,
- 24:46the links between there and monitoring people. But yeah, great question,
- 24:49Cecily. As always, thank you very much.
- 24:52We mentioned in the advert Martha's Rule, which I think is, yeah,
- 24:57could you expand on that?
- 24:59Yeah. And this links in really nicely, actually, because Martha's Rule is about listening to patients
- 25:04and recognising that they have a really unique insight into how well they are
- 25:11and the symptoms that they might be experiencing.
- 25:15So Martha's Rule has three components. So the first component is that,
- 25:21we as clinicians in the hospital should be asking patients at least once a day
- 25:27how they are feeling, how that compares to how they felt yesterday.
- 25:32And so what that is really recognising, as I said, is patients and their loved
- 25:37ones or anybody who knows them it might be a carer.
- 25:42And knows them really well and knows what is normal for them so me walking in
- 25:46as a nurse I don't know what they're like normally and it might be harder for
- 25:49me to judge if something's going wrong,
- 25:52whereas a relative who knows them really well might say this really isn't normal
- 25:57for them this isn't right at all and they can be really sensitive to picking
- 26:00things up so what it's promoting and what we're introducing is regular check-ins.
- 26:05So every shift, how are you feeling? How does that compare to yesterday?
- 26:09And if they're saying, well, actually, I feel worse, taking that really seriously
- 26:13and saying, okay, is something not right here? Do we need to escalate their
- 26:17care? So that's part of Martha's rule.
- 26:20And then the other part of Martha's rule is a telephone service.
- 26:23So what that does is that allows patients themselves, relatives,
- 26:29any visitor, any staff member, anybody in the hospital to look at a patient
- 26:35and say, I think this patient is acutely deteriorating, something is not right.
- 26:41And we encourage people to escalate that within the teams themselves.
- 26:44So hopefully they go and speak to the nurse looking after them and that gets
- 26:47escalated through the normal channels.
- 26:49But where they've done that and they've said they're not right and they're still
- 26:52not getting the appropriate response, Martha's Rule gives them access to a dedicated
- 26:56phone line where they can call and say, I feel like my relative is deteriorating.
- 27:02Nobody's listening to me. Can you come and help?
- 27:05And what that comes through to, that comes through to us as a critical care
- 27:09outreach team. And that's how it's run in a majority of hospitals.
- 27:12It's critical. You will get a critical care outreach nurse.
- 27:15And that is an important distinction to make because unfortunately some of the.
- 27:20Some of the advertising has been around a second opinion. It doesn't provide
- 27:23you a medical second opinion. So we can't kind of come and say,
- 27:27no, actually your diagnosis is wrong and kind of solve that problem.
- 27:32There are different routes to which you can do that in a hospital.
- 27:35This is about identifying acute deterioration and listening to patients and
- 27:40saying, something is not right.
- 27:43I'm coming in as an independent person.
- 27:46There's no impact of hierarchy, I'm a fresh pair of eyes.
- 27:50Is this patient acutely deteriorating? And if they are, and this comes off the
- 27:55case of a really sad case of Martha Mills, who was a young girl who fell off
- 28:00her bike and ruptured her pancreas.
- 28:03And she was in hospital for about nine days and was becoming increasingly unwell.
- 28:09And her parents, who are very articulate, very educated,
- 28:14people, who you would think would be able to get the help that they needed could
- 28:17see that she was becoming more unwell
- 28:19but nobody was listening to them and unfortunately she went on to die,
- 28:23of sepsis and what they found was that their opportunities were missed and if
- 28:28she'd been escalated earlier she likely would have survived so it's about giving
- 28:33patients themselves or relatives the opportunity to say,
- 28:36something isn't right something's been missed here can you come in as a kind of fresh pair of eyes.
- 28:42And in my hospital, you'll get one of my lovely team turn up as a fresh pair
- 28:46of eyes and kind of say, is there any sign that this patient's acutely deteriorating,
- 28:51and listening to those concerns?
- 28:55That's so amazing. That's so tragic. But yeah, I think the key word there was,
- 28:59yeah, it's the phone line of no one's listening to me.
- 29:01That's so vital, isn't it? Is there any more information without kind of naming
- 29:05and blaming, but just to learn from it, why that kind of diagnostic overshadowing
- 29:09happened in the case of Martha Mills and her parents? What went wrong?
- 29:14So there are several. I think if you just search Martha's rules,
- 29:18there's lots of articles out there there is an absolutely devastating interview that,
- 29:24with her mother talking about what happened while they're in there so that's
- 29:27a really you know it's a really hard listen but worth listening to,
- 29:32a lot of the findings were around the impact of hierarchy was a big and that
- 29:37kind of confirmation bias or
- 29:40so one person has said there's okay they're okay so and actually if that is
- 29:44a senior person which i think in this particular case it was somebody very senior,
- 29:49and the medical team is saying they're okay then that kind of feeds down and
- 29:53actually then when they spoke to junior doctors nurses afterwards they're like
- 29:57well I was a bit worried about her but they couldn't you know the consultant
- 29:59said they were okay so that kind of reassured me.
- 30:03So yeah hierarchy did play a part and sometimes and that's about that's what
- 30:06Martha's rule is about just kind of completely breaking that down and getting
- 30:09somebody completely fresh in who's kind of not not part of that hierarchy and
- 30:14saying right let's just take a fresh look at this,
- 30:16something's not right and usually to be fair to those clinicians usually,
- 30:23so most of the time these calls we find that actually everything is being done
- 30:27as it should quite often it's just a communication issue well I say just a communication
- 30:31issue communication is obviously very important but you know everything is being
- 30:35done it just hasn't been communicated well and.
- 30:38But occasionally we do pick up something where something could be improved.
- 30:42And where we do that, usually we take that back to that medical team and look,
- 30:46you need to take another look at this patient. And generally people will go,
- 30:50OK, you know, let's have a fresh look at this and we work together.
- 30:53So, yeah. Very interesting.
- 30:57And there may well be other lines to do it, but could you mention like members
- 31:01of staff feeling pressure or kind of appeal to authority in that?
- 31:05But I mean, would a member of staff be able to use this phone line as well? I mean, absolutely.
- 31:11Yeah, it's completely designed. So actually, that's what the master's rule says.
- 31:15It says this should be available for all staff and patients and families.
- 31:19So that could be that might be, you know, another health professional who is visiting the patient.
- 31:26So it might be an occupational therapist or somebody who's could be anybody
- 31:31who comes in to see that patient says, I'm worried. I don't,
- 31:34for whatever reason, feel like I'm able to raise it through the normal channels.
- 31:38We can kind of get a completely fresh set of eyes. And so, yeah,
- 31:41it's there for everybody.
- 31:43Okay, I'm going to force myself to go on. I'm just always fascinated and traumatized
- 31:48by diagnostic overshadowing. We've had lots of people on, you know,
- 31:52the show talking about various different ways.
- 31:55And yeah, unfortunately, it's not always, for example, sometimes it might be
- 31:59neurodivergent. Sometimes it might be something like a learning disability,
- 32:02like Down syndrome. but also it can happen with older people,
- 32:04with women, with children.
- 32:07And it's not always done like with bad intention. It's just human nature,
- 32:12isn't it? You think, oh...
- 32:14I mean, I can't offend a male person who says she's just been a woman,
- 32:17but I'm just trying to think of an example where it's not always done out of
- 32:22bad intention. It's just human bias,
- 32:24isn't it? People come from different experiences, but it's frustrating.
- 32:27Yeah, it's very hard to kind of pull those apart and kind of question your own
- 32:32bias and keep that in check all the time.
- 32:34So okay right right well i'm gonna pull pull myself away right okay so let's
- 32:39move on we mentioned as well thank you for the questions people if you've got
- 32:42more questions then do feel free to,
- 32:44put them in the comments yeah we mentioned picks before post-intensive care
- 32:47syndrome so yeah could you expand on that yeah absolutely so i'll just mention
- 32:52a little bit just give you a little bit of a.
- 32:56A thought of what the experience is like being a patient in intensive care.
- 33:00And I think that then feeds through to understanding what then happens afterwards.
- 33:04So, obviously, patients who come into intensive care with a very broad variety
- 33:10of presentations. So, it might be sepsis, they might have had a cardiac arrest,
- 33:14you know, all sorts of different presentations.
- 33:17And what we often, obviously, it depends on what's going,
- 33:20on, but let's use a septic patient as an example so we might have had to put
- 33:25them on a ventilatory support so we put a breathing tube down the throat we,
- 33:31sedate them quite heavily,
- 33:33obviously in order to tolerate that and we kind of take over their breathing
- 33:37for them to overcome their respiratory problems,
- 33:40and we might have to give them quite hefty drugs to keep their blood pressure
- 33:45up so once again in a septic patient talked about your blood vessels being very
- 33:48leaky we give them some really what we call well there's some kind of inotropic
- 33:52drugs or vasoactive drugs that.
- 33:55Might help constrict the blood vessels or encourage the heart to pump more forcefully.
- 34:01So they're quite, but they can be quite damaging to kind of your peripheral
- 34:05circulation and things, but it's necessary at the time.
- 34:08They might develop kidney failure and we have to put them on.
- 34:11It's a bit like a long-term dialysis machine, but it's a bit gentler.
- 34:15We're using critical care to kind of do the work of their kidneys for them.
- 34:20So we kind of take over everything. We sedate them very heavily and they are very well in itself.
- 34:27And what that can lead to is your experience as a critical care patient.
- 34:32And I'll encourage Steve to chip in with anything that I've missed because obviously
- 34:36that real life experience.
- 34:39But it can lead to patients having big blocks of missing memories where they've been heavily sedated.
- 34:45And actually that can be really traumatic for people. they can have really vivid
- 34:49hallucinations that they really firmly at the time believe are happening people
- 34:54talk about all sorts of things where they've you know.
- 35:00They think they're being held hostage or they're lots of people seem to think
- 35:04they're on a boat I'm not sure I don't know whether that's to do with air beds,
- 35:07lots you know they have to have really vivid dreams and nightmares,
- 35:12they're obviously really can if they're aware enough they're very scared that
- 35:15they're going to die so there's there's a massive,
- 35:20physiological and psychological impact of critical care and I will just mention
- 35:24while I'm on the talk about how tracheostomies are used in critical care because
- 35:28I think that might be interesting to to some of your practitioners so,
- 35:33where a patient is on ventilatory support we put a breathing tube down and take
- 35:38over the breathing and sometimes they'll get well enough quick enough that we
- 35:41can take that breathing tube out and they can breathe on their own themselves.
- 35:44But where they've been that unwell from a respiratory perspective,
- 35:48sometimes we'll use a tracheostomy. And what that allows us to do is to wake the patient up.
- 35:53Because you can't wake someone up while they've got a tube stuck through their
- 35:57mouth, but they can have the tracheostomy and they'll be awake with the tracheostomy
- 35:59and they can still be on the ventilator.
- 36:01And that allows us to very slowly wean down that respiratory support as they
- 36:06gradually build up their strength again.
- 36:09So that is something that critical care patients might go through.
- 36:12So that's just a little bit of the flavour. I mean, you could talk for hours on end just about that.
- 36:19So then we talk about post-intensive care syndrome. So what impact does that
- 36:24have? So I'll make it very clear, I'm not an expert in rehabilitation after
- 36:28critical care, certainly and particularly not in the long term.
- 36:33My focus is more around that transition from critical care to the ward and that
- 36:37kind of immediate impact.
- 36:39But I can hopefully give you some kind of general insights. So physically,
- 36:43muscle weakness is a really big issue that will be really relevant to your clinicians.
- 36:48So we call it ITU acquired weakness.
- 36:51And I always think when I explain to it, people, if you've ever,
- 36:54which I'm sure you have, because this is a profession you're in,
- 36:57when you see somebody who's broken their leg and they've had a plaster cast
- 36:59on, no, we don't use plaster cast as much as we used to.
- 37:03These days, but they've had a plaster cast on and you take it off and then you
- 37:05compare one leg to the other leg and you can visually see that significant muscle wasting.
- 37:12Well, if you imagine a patient who's been in ITU in bed for a significant period
- 37:16of time, but we do try and get them mobilising as much as we can to kind of
- 37:19keep, preserve that muscle.
- 37:21But despite our best efforts, they might have had a significant period where
- 37:25they're not using their muscles at all.
- 37:27So you've got that same muscle wasting across the whole body and that's the
- 37:31muscles that you can see and it's also the muscles that you can't see.
- 37:34So for example, where we've taken over their breathing and they've been on a
- 37:38ventilator, they've gone from using their respiratory muscles to breathe to
- 37:42being on a ventilator and we are pushing the air or the oxygen in
- 37:46and actually get wasting of their respiratory muscles.
- 37:49And you can't see that in a patient. But so if you think about that widespread
- 37:53muscle wastage and we do a lot of things in ITU to prevent that.
- 37:57For example, when somebody's got a trachea and we're weaning them off that support,
- 38:00we'll start getting them out
- 38:02of bed and and doing things to to preserve that as much as possible but,
- 38:06um even with that so that's a really big thing that can then they can have really
- 38:11severe fatigue so even just the most basic thing can make them absolutely exhausted.
- 38:17And we do a lot of education for nurses on the ward trying to help people understand
- 38:21this because they might sit there in the bed when they've gone to a general
- 38:23ward looking fine but actually just the motion of having to pick up their own cup and
- 38:29get themselves a drink is really, really hard for them because of that muscle
- 38:33weakness and just the tiredness.
- 38:35And they might experience chronic pain, either generally related to their kind
- 38:39of critical care condition.
- 38:41Interventions, or it might be specific to the disease process that they've had.
- 38:46Sleep disturbances, so that links between the kind of physical and the psychological,
- 38:51are really, really common. So, difficult to see when they lose their normal
- 38:55circadian rhythm because, you know, they've been sedated for a long while.
- 38:58We don't have a lot of windows in ITU. I don't think most ITUs do.
- 39:02So, they get completely out of rhythm with that.
- 39:04And then cognitive problems. So, post-intensive care syndrome is split into
- 39:08physical, cognitive, and psychological.
- 39:10So, cognitive can be issues with memory, issues with attention span,
- 39:15concentration, and any kind of executive functions like organising,
- 39:20planning can be really, really difficult and then feed into that fatigue.
- 39:24And it takes a lot of work to kind of do basic tasks.
- 39:28And then the psychological impact can be absolutely massive.
- 39:32So anxiety, depression can be really significant after critical care.
- 39:38Some people can go on to develop post-traumatic stress syndrome disorder after
- 39:44critical care admission.
- 39:45And that's not all patients. And I don't say that because we have got a clinical
- 39:50psychologist who works in our intensive care unit and they do a lot of work
- 39:54to obviously prevent that and hopefully by talking about things,
- 39:57working through things.
- 39:58But some groups of people will go on to develop that.
- 40:02Sleep disturbances, panic attacks can, can happen after because actually people.
- 40:10There's many different things that can impact that.
- 40:14So directly, that experience of critical care is very, very traumatic.
- 40:19Then also they can be adjusting to, you know, they might have been a perfectly fit and well,
- 40:25person before, you know, thinking about your kind of perhaps some of your key
- 40:29clients, you know, they might have been a really fit sports person who is used
- 40:33to being really independent and really strong.
- 40:35And suddenly now that's all been kind of stripped away from them and they might
- 40:40have you know physical disabilities or deficits after that
- 40:43and that is a massive kind of life change for them so psychologically that can
- 40:48be enormously difficult,
- 40:51and then there can be kind of so that's the kind of general overarching post-intensive
- 40:55care syndrome and then there can be things that are specific to what they've
- 40:59come in with so if they've come in with a respiratory infection that they might,
- 41:04have longer-term damage to their lungs from the inflammation.
- 41:08There might be a patient who's had a cardiac arrest and now they've got really
- 41:12big problems with their memory, which can go on to last for years or be a permanent change. So,
- 41:19It's a massive, you know, it's a massive life change for those patients,
- 41:22but it's very individual to the specific patient and their journey.
- 41:29That's fascinating. And it's such a massive insight into how it's not just all
- 41:35the physical. I mean, it's amazing.
- 41:39You explained it so well with the idea of a leg and a cast or something like
- 41:43a thigh and you can see the atrophy.
- 41:45And but when it's talking about the muscles internal muscles and that then you
- 41:49can't see it so that just and and there's a tendency to think oh again they're
- 41:53not making an effort what's going on but it's not just the physical but then
- 41:57you went on and talked about the cognitive as well and the psychological which is,
- 42:00again we talk about so much on on the show especially with kind of like moving
- 42:05away from structure to the biopsychosocial and all that sort of stuff so fits in so well,
- 42:09and i guess all of these areas although this is when so the pics is when symptoms
- 42:15are getting worse and there's like a relapse and and,
- 42:18but I guess all of these symptoms can persist maybe not to such a big degree
- 42:23just with somebody who's been through this and lived experience of sepsis and
- 42:26they're still going to have maybe
- 42:28that difference in cognitive processing and and depending on their everyday
- 42:32life and I suppose it can go up and down it's not going to be just,
- 42:35you know it could be depending on other factors that are going on in their lives.
- 42:38Yeah I think it I think it's really variable so some patients will come out
- 42:43by to you and look like they're really struggling and but have quite a rapid
- 42:47improvement other people will will,
- 42:50stay at the same level for a you know extended period of time and and really
- 42:54struggle and other people kind of go up and down it's really,
- 42:58very individual to the patient and it's really about just listening to them
- 43:02and what their story is and their journey and actually.
- 43:07I think there's a lot to be said for people having the opportunity to talk about
- 43:12it and just listening to them. And actually that in itself, particularly in
- 43:15terms of some of the psychological impacts, can really help.
- 43:20For example people who are able to reason through and talk about the strange
- 43:26dreams that they had and the hallucinations actually,
- 43:29the ones who are able to reason that through and say no actually I can recognize
- 43:33now that that was a hallucination that didn't really happen psychologically
- 43:38will do better than the ones who get really stuck in that,
- 43:44thought process that that really happened and really struggle to kind of reason
- 43:49out that actually that you know that probably didn't really happen so actually,
- 43:54just giving people a lot of opportunity to talk and that's a lot of what my team do so,
- 43:59when the patients arrive in the world we see everybody the day after they're
- 44:02discharged regardless of how long they've been in critical care,
- 44:05and part of that is physically checking up on them because they you know sometimes they can be
- 44:11they're vulnerable if you've got if you've got muscle weakness you're going
- 44:14to be more vulnerable to picking up another infection getting ill again so we're
- 44:18physically checking up on them but obviously giving them that opportunity to
- 44:21talk through their experience,
- 44:24is really really important.
- 44:25And that can persist for a long
- 44:27time I think it's also important to emphasize the impact on the family,
- 44:33and their journey can be extremely traumatic as well they've obviously watched
- 44:39their loved one often nearly die they They can be very traumatized and their
- 44:44experience can be different.
- 44:47And sometimes I think the experience of the patient and the family,
- 44:54it can be difficult for them to connect with one another sometimes over that.
- 44:57Because actually the, you know, I'm genuinely saying perhaps the family are
- 45:03massively thankful. Oh, you've survived. I thought you were going to die and
- 45:07you survived. are so scared, and now you're getting well again.
- 45:13Whereas that survivor themselves is maybe only able to, they might not be feeling
- 45:20thankful because they've survived.
- 45:23They're thinking, oh my goodness, you know, my whole life has changed.
- 45:27I can't do things, you know, I feel scared, I feel traumatized.
- 45:30So actually there can be, I think it is important to recognize the impact on the family as well.
- 45:37That sometimes they're not always in the same place as one another and it can
- 45:42be difficult to kind of bring those things together.
- 45:45Yeah, that's really interesting. Yeah, a total mismatch between what they're
- 45:49feeling and, yeah, the secret to poor communication then and things getting desperate.
- 45:56Yeah, amazing. Thank you, Alan. That's incredible. Steve, talking of lived experience,
- 45:58Steve has come back and said, every day is a school day.
- 46:02A professor said to me, I believe that passionately as a therapist,
- 46:05and that is one thing I saw in the ITU.
- 46:08Somehow I spent 18 days in the ITU, yet I had some very strange dreams.
- 46:13And he goes on to say, pain, MSK pain being shattered very quickly and sleep issues.
- 46:19Alan is so right from being very fit, sepsis major surgery this can destroy
- 46:23all the folks do a fantastic job in the hospital one nurse said life gets better
- 46:26every day when you open your eyes if,
- 46:30yeah and it's just that like yeah that very slow,
- 46:35gradual recovery and those and i think that's probably maybe what's useful for
- 46:40for you know the practitioners listening to this,
- 46:44podcast it's that setting those little goals once again i'm not i'm not an expert
- 46:48in rehabilitation many of your listeners know a lot more about that than me,
- 46:53but what i've kind of learned from listening to patients is it's it's focusing
- 46:56on those little goals like one little thing at a time and gradually,
- 47:01building it up because and that goal might be something,
- 47:05very very simple,
- 47:08so some of the things we do in hospital like the first goal might just be sitting
- 47:10on the edge of the bed and just holding your weight up on the edge of the bed
- 47:15for a period of your time might be one of the first things that you do or you
- 47:19know it might just be as simple as feeding yourself and getting you.
- 47:23You know getting your muscles moving a little bit so those little goals and
- 47:26then gradually building up and then sometimes accepting that then then will
- 47:30be a little bit of setback and gradually so that I think for your,
- 47:35your listeners if they come across this in practice will be what's really important
- 47:39so listening to where that patient is now and what are a kind of realistic small
- 47:44small goals that we can look for.
- 47:46And I guess thinking of our listeners who hopefully now with the information,
- 47:52you've given, I've got more confidence if someone does come in and they see
- 47:56that they are recovering from this kind of experience, they can help them.
- 48:00I mean, starting off with the physical, I guess it's classic kind of loading really.
- 48:04You're looking at that Goldilocks zone where it's not too little, not too much.
- 48:07But with this knowledge then, you
- 48:09can help guide the patient who might be trying to do too much too soon.
- 48:13I guess there's some people like that and other people who've got a little bit
- 48:15of kind of kinesophobia or just phobia of damaging themselves even more.
- 48:19So it's just working out who's in front of you and guiding absolutely and that'll
- 48:23be as you say that's spot on it'll be very individual to the patients so some
- 48:28patients will really struggle,
- 48:31and want to be doing everything because you know they want to get back to their
- 48:33normal life they want to push things forward but actually,
- 48:36by pushing themselves too hard they make more a risk of kind of getting very
- 48:40fatigued and causing setbacks so it's about helping them to kind of set the
- 48:47smaller goals that can then help them achieve those big goals.
- 48:50And I can, you know, as a kind of keen sports person myself.
- 48:56I can imagine that frustration from going from being able to do everything and
- 49:00suddenly not be able to do everything.
- 49:02But then there will be other people who are absolutely terrified of doing anything.
- 49:06So the ones that come to mind for me are might be the ones who've had a very
- 49:12sudden, you know, they might have collapsed.
- 49:15You know we've had people collapse at the gym and have a cardiac arrest and
- 49:18yes they have been fortunate enough to survive but now they are absolutely terrified
- 49:26to do anything because you know,
- 49:29because of what's happened to them so it's very much about listening to where your patient,
- 49:35is perhaps just bearing in mind what could be going on under the surface because
- 49:40I guess it depends some people will you know,
- 49:44talk quite openly about things whereas other people for a variety of reasons
- 49:48will be more reluctant to talk about things.
- 49:53But listening to them and, you know, helping them to set those goals that are appropriate for them.
- 50:02I think it's always interesting with, because we talk about loading with strength
- 50:05and conditioning coaches and that, but I think part of loading can be communication
- 50:09and listening to somebody is starting off on that rehab ladder of loading where
- 50:13you're giving them confidence, allowing them to
- 50:15hear themselves, you know, because they might not have had a chance.
- 50:18People can talk to themselves and I do it all the time. It doesn't really help
- 50:20that much. Sometimes it does, but when you've got someone else in the room and
- 50:24they're listening to you not giving advice but they're just there and they might
- 50:27be doing I mean if you're trained in it or if you had a,
- 50:30maybe if you've done a great communication course check my website then you
- 50:33might know just now and again to do a few summaries or just reflective listening
- 50:37just to show you are engaged but not giving advice,
- 50:40and that person could walk away after an hour massage and just have sorted out
- 50:44so much stuff just from having a chance to hear their own thoughts,
- 50:48coming out of their mouth you know and they might not have had that before because
- 50:51they might not have wanted to tell anybody before we're so big on the show of of trying to,
- 50:56empower massage therapists in particular,
- 50:59of the power you have not power is the wrong word of how much you can help someone
- 51:03but just make them feel relaxed during a massage and let them talk let them
- 51:07speak their mind and stuff it's it's a gift isn't it if you have that yeah yeah
- 51:11i completely agree that can actually be.
- 51:15Yeah be completely life-changing and especially when people have been through
- 51:19these really traumatic experiences just having that that time,
- 51:24i wanted to check i think it's important as well because if they if if,
- 51:28as well as doing that and they're not soft skills people don't don't call them
- 51:32soft skills anymore so it's probably one of the most missed parts of rehab is
- 51:35that is the communication and helping someone find the motivation and the reason
- 51:38to do it rather than just telling them,
- 51:40but when people do move on to the actual physical loading what we should mention
- 51:44Are there any particular red flags where maybe you are doing too much?
- 51:49Yeah, so there's a few things you could look out for kind of physically,
- 51:53I guess, if they're really significantly
- 51:56breathless and they're really struggling to kind of get there.
- 51:59I would, you know, I would certainly suggest that they go and get that checked
- 52:03out with their GP if there's any kind of oxygen desaturations.
- 52:07Saturations but i don't know whether that would always be something that some
- 52:11people might have access to,
- 52:12but that would link in with severe breathlessness anyway so that might be what's
- 52:16happening even if you can't see the oxygen saturations if they're feeling really
- 52:20breathless that could be what's going on in the background any kind of what's called syncope so any,
- 52:24episodes where they're they're kind of fainting or losing consciousness,
- 52:29sorry to butt in but could that happen is that something you should be aware
- 52:32of they're training for the kind
- 52:34of first time and maybe if they've wanted to do a little bit too much?
- 52:39I wouldn't say that's a normal finding, which I guess is why you'd think of
- 52:43it as a red flag. You wouldn't expect to see that and it could indicate that
- 52:46something else is going on.
- 52:48As I said, it's not really my area of expertise specifically related to this,
- 52:52but I think you'd always want to get that checked out. You wouldn't be expecting
- 52:56to find that. So they should be getting that checked out by a medic.
- 53:00Kind of worsening fatigue where things are getting kind of worse over time.
- 53:05And I think the really important thing to emphasise is any kind of psychological distress.
- 53:12And that's as big a part of it as the physical. So where people don't.
- 53:19Aren't able to talk or process things that can be a really big concern,
- 53:26and just making sure that you know unfortunately services for people to support
- 53:32people after critical care are variable we as a hospital run a follow-up clinic
- 53:36so they'll get invited back and,
- 53:39they'll do an in-person walk around the unit which can be really helpful for
- 53:42them for them to process those memories and and things so there are services
- 53:48out there so it might be that they can get in contact with the critical care
- 53:51unit where they were a patient,
- 53:54or obviously through their gp they can access support,
- 53:58or there is if one of our listeners is working and they're thanks to you they're
- 54:02thinking i can help this person i'm going to worry about and i'm going to just
- 54:05collapse in front of me if i just make them do one thing but i suppose again
- 54:09it's worth reaching out getting in contact with their GP.
- 54:13Although it's not it wouldn't be like a contraindication but it'd be good practice
- 54:16to get in touch with them just say this is what I want to do can you help me
- 54:19can we work together sort of thing yeah I mean I'm a massive fan of that kind
- 54:23of multidisciplinary working and you know everybody,
- 54:27has got different insights and different things to to kind of so actually by pulling that,
- 54:34different kind of knowledge base together then actually that can lead to really
- 54:38good holistic care so yeah absolutely kind of seeking what's appropriate what
- 54:43can help or for example somebody who's had something like,
- 54:48a cardiac event that's led to their critical care admission they,
- 54:52most hospitals or i might hopefully it's all hospitals have like a cardiac rehab
- 54:56program where they will bring them in for a little bit supervised exercise on
- 55:00a treadmill where they can monitor
- 55:01things like their oxygen saturations so that kind of link in to help
- 55:05be that bridge between moving them on from that that could be a really useful
- 55:10kind of way that you could link through as well so,
- 55:14yeah putting that all together is really good to.
- 55:17Great stuff. Look at that. 8.59. That's been amazing, Lannis.
- 55:21Thank you so much for sharing your experience. Yeah.
- 55:24I feel empowered. I'm not even a clinical practitioner anymore.
- 55:28It's always funny. Gary, Gary's probably sitting there after shows like this,
- 55:31Gary, the founder of the STS thinking, I really want to open up clinic again.
- 55:34I really want to help these people, but that's the way it should be because
- 55:37we're empowered by people like you sharing, you know, how we can help and the
- 55:41positivity and that and the need for it. So Yeah, amazing. Thank you so much.
- 55:46We mentioned sepsistrust.org. So that's a great place for information,
- 55:50I guess. Is there any other sources of info if people are interested in?
- 55:53So there's a charity called ICU Steps. So if you search for that,
- 55:57you should be able to find it.
- 55:58And that's a real source of information for patients, their families,
- 56:02but also for any clinicians to find out a bit more about critical care.
- 56:06So that's somewhere that you yourselves could get information from,
- 56:10but also a place to signpost patients or relatives to, to, to get information,
- 56:17that can kind of support them because it's,
- 56:20Most people who are in this situation are searching for that information and
- 56:26navigating their way through a complex journey. So they are there to support.
- 56:30We'll make sure the most of those go into the show notes. Are you,
- 56:34you probably haven't got time, you're too busy helping people,
- 56:36but do you blog or anything or put anything online? Are you involved in sharing information?
- 56:41Not, no, not particularly related to, you know, my clinical work.
- 56:46Sounds like there's something else going on. You've got a running blog, haven't you?
- 56:50I i i have got an etsy store where i sell crocheted things so we'll make sure
- 56:54that alanna forest's etsy store goes a few calisthenics videos online but really okay,
- 57:03yeah so yeah best places then are um yeah sepsis trust or good i see step store
- 57:07unless you're after any um is that not on the high street as well or just etsy
- 57:11no just etsy i've only just i've only got two things yeah i've only just restarted that because,
- 57:15young children and all that i used to have a lot more time but.
- 57:20Gary benson has jumped in here i didn't see this comment before gary benson
- 57:23founder of the sta says such an interesting chat this evening gives us an understanding
- 57:26of what goes on in emergency medicine when someone is having a bad time with
- 57:29their health yeah this is makes you want to go back and cleaning doesn't it
- 57:31gary i know that's what's going through your head,
- 57:33don't do it you're enough going on all those people you have to talk to every
- 57:36day but anyway right brilliant time is escaping us thank you everybody who joined
- 57:41us live thank you again steve for sharing your experience and helping put this
- 57:44together i mean It's such a great example of people coming together and Steve's an STA member.
- 57:48Obviously, Steve's a great point of contact if you are an STA member to reach out.
- 57:52But also, yeah, you've got those websites. If people want to...
- 57:58Know more about you and what you do is linkedin are you on linkedin or anything
- 58:01like that or linkedin i'm not i don't think healthcare you haven't got time
- 58:05have you well i think i think working in a big big hospital like i do we don't,
- 58:11necessarily tend to use those resources like that because,
- 58:14i you know i've kind of worked here for my whole career and worked through that
- 58:19so i don't you're very much in education there isn't that's part of your role
- 58:23as well yeah but it's very much which I guess it's kind of.
- 58:26Quite inward facing.
- 58:28I've got the whole hospital to educate. So I don't do that much.
- 58:31But maybe this has inspired me this evening because I was very nervous about
- 58:34doing it, but I've actually really enjoyed it. Hopefully, wouldn't it?
- 58:36That'd be great. That'd be cool.
- 58:37Well, thank you so much for your time. You never know. Amazing.
- 58:39Really, really, really amazing.
- 58:41Cecily as well, the great questioner, as always, has said another cracking episode.
- 58:45Has been a cracking episode.
- 58:47So thank you, yes, Alana Forrester. And everyone who joined us live,
- 58:50thank you very much for listening.
- 58:51We always do these live because we always get the feedback that although we
- 58:54download the podcast, we love the fact it's live and it just makes a difference.
- 58:58So we will continue doing it.
- 59:00I don't know whether it'll be for another 302 shows. Who knows?
- 59:02We're all getting older, but we'll try.
- 59:05Next week on the show, we are going to begin our countdown to Therapy Show 2026,
- 59:11formerly known as Therapy Expo, which is happening once again at the NEC Birmingham
- 59:15on the November 25th and 26th.
- 59:17And it's only eight weeks away. So we're going to start that countdown.
- 59:20I'm going to be joined by the marvellous Mike James, who a lot of you know as the endurance physio.
- 59:23He's going to be coming on the show to share information on what he's presenting
- 59:26this year at Therapy Show, as well as what he is looking forward to.
- 59:29So that will be a live recording as always next tuesday october the 8th uk time,
- 59:34on the sports soviet association youtube channel or facebook page but until
- 59:40then just thank you once again alana forrester for your time thank you much appreciated,
- 59:45and yeah thanks everyone who joined us thank you to the listener if you listen
- 59:48to the podcast and you've enjoyed the show a couple of things before i leave
- 59:51you one just share it with somebody don't keep it yourself come on now let's
- 59:54help the good of the whole industry and two
- 59:57a great way of sharing it indirectly is just leaving a rating or review It will
- 1:00:01literally just appear high in Google searches when someone puts sepsis in.
- 1:00:05And that's how we just get the good word of our guests like Alana out there.
- 1:00:08So leave a rating or review. Take the time. I know eight seconds is like everything
- 1:00:12these days, but that's all it'll take, especially if you're on iPhone.
- 1:00:15Leave a little rating and review there.
- 1:00:17Brilliant. Thanks, people. Hopefully speak again soon. Until the next time,
- 1:00:20take care of yourselves and each other.