A team of multidisciplinary staff from the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham (QEHB) have made their presenting debut at an international conference.

The team from the Clinical Decisions Unit (CDU) attended the Society for Acute Medicine (SAM) conference in Bournemouth in September 2018, where they displayed eleven posters and delivered three presentations detailing various projects which have been completed in the department for the purpose of service improvement. Their work meant a substantial amount of the entire conference content was from the QEHB CDU.

The team is made up of:

• Matron Ciaran Basketfield
• Charge nurse Jon Broom
• Sisters Leah Duffy, Rebecca Timson, Hannah Laugher, Kate McGhee and Cait Nee
• Medical student Will Lloyd
• Specialist clinical pharmacist Ekta Punj
• Consultants Dr Vinay Reddy and Dr Adam Seccombe
• Junior doctors Vicky Kamwa, Catherine Atkin, Ian Bertram, Will Hutton and Henry Hughes

SAM is the national representative body for staff caring for medical patients in the acute hospital setting. It now has over 1000 members, the majority of whom are doctors specialising or training in acute medicine. However, one of the society’s key principles is the recognition of the important of the multidisciplinary team. The SAM council includes nursing and pharmacy representatives and actively encourages participation from all members of the MDT.

The purpose of the presentations was to showcase the team’s research and service improvement projects, which have all been carried out at QEHB.

Sister Cait Nee said: “This is the first time that nurses from CDU have submitted work for the conference so we were really excited about it.

“The conference was extremely successful. Medical and pharmacy staff also showcased research projects that were undertaken on the CDU which were well-received, with Dr Nafisa Syeda receiving commendation for her work on HIV testing.”