BACCN NEWS

doi: 10.1111/nicc.12058

The Cost of Caring. Resilience and Sustainability inCritical Care

‘Didn’t we have a lovely time the day we went to Southport. . . ’

Well we were there for 3 days and yes . . . we definitelytook Southport by storm, sun, sea, sand and success was hadby all!!

With over 280 critical care delegates participating in ourplethora of learning opportunities for all levels of experi-ence – this years conference was a superb all-round event.

We started off proceedings with a pre-conference Master-class on ‘How to manage & maintain CRRT in ICU’. Ledby Annette Richardson and Jayne Whatmore, attendees weregiven the chance to interact with our experts and get somehands-on experience with the latest equipment from Bax-ter Healthcare. Key messages from our masterclass were theimportance of assessing patients, recognition and early inter-vention in acute kidney injury (AKI), identification of thecorrect type of continuous renal replacement therapy for theindividual patient, to anticipate the need to change treatments

depending on condition changes and a call for significant nurs-ing expertise for bedside troubleshooting to increase patientsafety and therapy efficiency.

This years theme was The Cost of Caring. Resilience andSustainability in Critical Care – and it was not about financesas some might assume, although cost-effectiveness was men-tioned in many of the papers presented, but about how wegive high quality care to our patients and also how we carefor ourselves and our colleagues as well to help us remaincaring, competent and compassionate practitioners. We wereprivileged to hear some amazing key notes on a range oftopics including the paper on emotional resilience by Profes-sor Julie Scholes, who called for us to consider how we useordinary magic such as belonging and networking, learningand developing our knowledge as well as attending to ourphysical needs to ensure our health and well-being as carers.Julie left us with a challenge to return and review what we cando in our workplace and teams to help us develop resilienceand one idea was to review our changing room facilities, arethey an environment that allows us to let go of our day as wechange and go home? Philip Woodrow challenged the dele-gates to consider the importance of physiological function notage whilst caring for older people in critical care, and are we,and our environments, as good as we/they can be for thesevulnerable patients? Sadly Professor Janet Richardson wasnot able to present her paper on how climate change impactson critical care but delegates will receive her slide set and wehope to have this paper written for NICC over the comingmonths. Our final key note was delivered by Andrea Berryand Andrea Baldwin who set the context for the importanceof the skin care bundle to help us all reduce this phenomenonin our high-risk patients. Using interactive voting, delegatesinformed us that they continue to face challenges includingcompeting priorities that impact on the capacity to regularlyreposition, and the financial challenges that prevent themfrom using high-quality products that could prevent oral andfacial ulcers.

© 2013 British Association of Critical Care Nurses • Vol 18 No 6 319

BACCN News

We had some lighter but equally important plenary sessionson laughter therapy which has physiological benefits and canaid creativity. Lisa Sturge had the whole audience practisingbelly laughs and giggly winks, giving us some top tips on howwe can help ourselves and our teams to be more energizedand form positive working relationships. Jenny Sergeant gaveus an overview of a temperament typing model called TrueColours. She conducted an interactive session which gave del-egates an understanding of their core values and preferencesand how this can benefit team harmony and understanding.

The closing session was also interactive as we debatedtwo key topics. The first, led by Nurse Consultant AnnetteRichardson, was the impact of the Francis enquiry on criticalcare nursing, and delegates voted on staffing ratios. The sec-ond topic led by Fiona Lynch was on the challenges of caringfor the critically ill child in an adult unit. Both these topicswill be reported in a future issue of NICC.

To add to all of this, there were 48 specialist exhibi-tion stands and a packed programme of concurrent papers,ViPERS, workshops, simulation sessions and a trauma skillsworkshop led by the Military region, so we were full to therafters . . . and it left little time to visit the splendour thatSouthport had to offer us – although I think I did see a fewpeople off to the spa at one point and a few more headed for

the casino after our fantastic gala dinner where we danced tillmidnight!

I’m delighted to say Bertie, our BACCN mascot made a won-derful comeback and you can see his antics on our Facebookand website pages.

Congratulations to all who presented but special congrat-ulations go to our Best paper, ViPER and Poster presenters:Caroline Wilson, Lucy Mires, Sarah Holling and CathyDerham.

And Suzanne Fallaize won our ‘it to win it’ prize of a freeplace at conference 2014.

There’s so much to tell about this year’s BACCN 2013 con-ference we can’t fit it all into News, so do look up all thewinners and details on our website, www.baccn.org.uk.

With 2013 behind us we’re now looking forward to Septem-ber 2014 and the 28th Annual BACCN Conference takingplace in Cardiff. The theme for next year’s event is ‘Devel-oping a leading edge in critical care: front line leadership,innovation & practice’. Super early bird registration will beopening soon, so keep an eye on the website for more details,www.baccnconference.org.uk.

Colette Laws ChapmanConference Director, BACCN

320 © 2013 British Association of Critical Care Nurses