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Kathy is the Chief Infection Prevention and Control Practitioner (ICP) and Healthcare Associated Infection (HAI) Advisor at the Clinical Excellence Commission (CEC), NSW Health. Kathy is a credentialed Expert ICP (CICP-E) and a Fellow of the Australasian College of Infection Prevention and Control (ACIPC). She holds a master’s degree, a diploma in leadership and management, a range of internationally recognized certifications, and a current future leaders of healthcare DrPH candidate. Kathy has held a number of executive positions within the college , and currently retains membership of the editorial board for Infection, diseases & Health journal and member of the professional and credentialling standards committee. Kathy has extensive and broad expertise and lived experience in Infection Prevention and Control in Clinical Practice, with additional experience in translational non-healthcare IPC with particular experience in biocontainment ,outbreak management and multi-model IPC. Kathy was the NSW IPC lead for COVID-19 response. She has contributed nationally and internationally to a number of expert committees and panels and has published a number of papers in IPC. Kathy has received awards for her leadership and management, a premier’s award for her role with Hotel Quarantine program and the prestigious Claire Boardman Medal for Leadership in IPC 2022 the highest honour of the college and IPC in Australia.
Pauline Yeung Ng is Clinical Assistant Professor of Critical Care Medicine at The University of Hong Kong. She completed a research fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston where she specialized in outcomes research. Upon returning to Hong Kong, she has consolidated territory-wide efforts to utilize data from electronic health records to assess outcomes after ICU care. She has published in fields of extracorporeal life support, pharmacoepidemiology, and respiratory infections. Her research interests also include point-of-care hemodynamic assessment in the ICU. She is a keen ECMO educator and was the chief editor of the online “ECMO 101” course hosted on ELSO.org. She is currently Assistant Dean (Hospital Engagement) at the Faculty of Medicine.
Professor Daryl Jones graduated from the University of Melbourne in 1996 and is an Intensive Care Specialist at Austin Health.
Daryl is also an adjunct Professor at the University of Melbourne and Monash University and an advisor to the Safer Care Victoria
He has completed a doctor of medicine in aspects of the Rapid Response Team (RRT) and has also completed a PhD on the RRT that will assess the characteristics and outcomes of patient who are reviewed by the RRT, and details of resource utilization of the MET in ICU-equipped hospitals throughout Australia.
Daryl is the medical director of critical care outreach at the Austin Hospital and is the president-elect of the international society for Rapid Response Systems.
He has an interest in strategies to improve the recognition and response to clinical deterioration for deteriorating patients, including those with sepsis.
Professor Imogen Mitchell is an intensive care specialist at the Canberra Hospital and the Executive Director of Research and Academic Partnerships at Canberra Health Services. She was previously Dean of Medicine at the Australian National University’s Medical School, a Senior Medical Advisor at the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care and Director of Canberra Hospital’s ICU. She has a passionate interest in improving the care of deteriorating patients, including those that are dying.
Graduated MBBS from The University of Tamilnadu, Madras. India in 2000. Attained his Fellowship of College of Physicians and Surgeons (FCPS) and Doctorate in Medicine (MD) in Anaesthesiology in India in 2005, Gold Medallist in the Fellowship in Anaesthesiology (FCPS) 2005—winner of B Braun International Scholarship for Scientific and Academic Excellence in Anaesthesiology (2005).
Fellowship of the College of Intensive Care Medicine (FCICM) in 2009 and the European Diploma in Intensive Care Medicine (EDIC) in 2010. Krish joined the full-time staff of the RAH ICU in 2010.
Post Graduate Certificate in Clinical Ultrasound and Grad Cert in Crit Care Echo in 2011. Graduate Diploma in Health Service Management in 2012. Graduate Cert in Higher Education in 2014. Masters in Health Administration (Flinders University) in 2014.
Fellowships from the Royal Australasian College of Medical Administrators (FRACMA) in 2019 and the Australasian College of Health Service Management (FACHSM) in 2019.
Master of Public Health (University of Adelaide) in 2020 (Thesis topic: Preparedness and response to COVID-19 in a quaternary referral center and the interface with public health), Master of Philosophy (University of Adelaide) (Thesis topic: Diurnal variation in the performance of rapid response systems) in 2020.
Appointed as Head of Unit in 2020.
He is currently the Director of ICU, Royal Adelaide Hospital, Central Adelaide Local Health Network (CALHN).
Rahul is an intensivist with clinical appointments at Austin Hospital and The Northern Hospital. He obtained his medical degree from Monash University and completed intensive care fellowships at the Alfred and The Royal London hospitals. He is currently enrolled in a PhD through the Department of Critical Care at the University of Melbourne studying vasopressor therapies in critically ill patients. His non-clinical interests include medical education and the role of simulation in safety and quality improvement. He is the co-convener of Austin Health’s “The MET Course” which focuses on team leadership and human factors principles in managing deteriorating patients on the ward.
Tracey Bucknall (RN, ICU Cert, BN, Grad Dip Adv Nurs, PhD. FAAN, GAICD) is a Deakin Distinguished Professor at the School of Nursing and Midwifery, Faculty of Health, and Co-Director of the Centre for Quality and Patient Safety Research, Institute of Health Transformation, Deakin University. She holds a joint appointment at Alfred Health as the Foundational Chair in Nursing, and Director of Nursing Research.
Professor Bucknall is internationally recognised as a decision scientist in health care. Her research focuses on improving patient safety, augmenting clinical decision-making of clinicians and consumers, and the implementation of research into practice. She led theNHMRC funded PRONTO clinical trial, awarded the most impactful article in BMJ Quality & Safety Journal in 2022. She has explored patient and family involvement in escalation systems as a means of improving the recognition and response to clinical deterioration. She has presented her research nationally and internationally and published over 200 peer-reviewed publications. She serves on National Health and Medical Research Council grant review panels and advisory committees for the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care. Her recent awards include: the Deakin Distinguished Professorial Award (2017), the most prestigious academic honour conferred at Deakin University; Fellowship of the American Academy of Nursing (2018) and inducted into the International Nurse Researcher Hall of Fame of Sigma International (2019).
Melissa Bloomer is Professor of Critical Care Nursing at Griffith University, a joint appointment with Princess Alexandra Hospital ICU in Brisbane. Melissa’s research primarily focuses on adult end-of-life care, including communication, decision-making, organ donation and assisted dying, and understanding the unique and often additional needs of vulnerable groups at the end of life, including people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Melissa is Chair of the ACCCN End-of-Life Advisory Panel, and Fellow of ACCCN.
Dr. Kiran Deol is an Intensive Care Specialist currently working in regional Queensland on
Butchulla Country as well as being the Clinician Lead for the CICM Mentoring Program
Rural Trainee Mentoring Project.
Her dedication to her field is informed by a wealth of experience in intensive care units
across rural andmetropolitan settings in New SouthWales, Tasmania, and Queensland.
With a background as a consultant in both rural and tertiary healthcare environments, Dr
Deol brings a unique perspective to enhancing the smooth flow of patients, doctors, and
clinicians between rural and metropolitan areas. Her advocacy work aims to improve
healthcare access and outcomes across diverse communities, reflecting an evolving
commitment to bridging gaps in critical care service provision.
Dr Tina Xu is China-trained physician, Australia-trained intensivist and UK-trained ECMO
specialist. Having earned MBBS/ Master of Medicine in 1995 and MD-PhD in Gastroenterology
in 2000, her first senior position was Attending Physician in Gastroenterology at Peking
University Medical College Hospital, Beijing. Following her relocation to Australia in 2002 and
joining the intensive care medicine training programme in 2007, she was awarded FCICM in
2015 and has been working as a consultant intensivist since.
Tina’s special interest in ECMOled her relocate to the UK in 2017, working in Adult ICU of Royal
Brompton Hospital, London, a world-renown heart and lung centre and one of five NHScommissioned
ECMO centres for severe acute respiratory failure. Her 1-year ECMO fellowship
and 3-year ECMOconsultancy recorded comprehensive experience inmanaging complex heart
and lung conditions, ECMOand other forms ofmechanical circulatory support. She ledmultiple
Q&S initiatives and made significant contribution to the ECMO governance that helped the
centre to become an ELSO Centre of Excellence – Platinum Level in 2019. She was proudly in
the frontline providing ECMO support during the first wave COVID-19 pandemic in UK before
she returned to Australia in 2021 as ECMO Lead at Canberra Hospital, leading the ECMO
program as well as PERT pathway. Her achievement was recognised with a CHS CEO Award –
Excellence in Direct Service Delivery (Medical) in 2022.
She was appointed Deputy Director of ICU in March 2022 and has since made significant
contribution to the clinical governance, quality and safety, accreditation and culture
improvement, leading the unit through multiple challenges and changes. She has strong focus
on quality improvement and patient centred care, has led multiple projects in improving
quality & safety of patient care as well patient/family experience.
David Russell is an Intensive Care Registered Nurse and currently works as an RN and as the Equipment Coordinator of Westmead Hospital Intensive Care Unit. David has a Masters of Critical Care Nursing from the University of Tasmania and was the 2023 recipient of the General manager’s Award for Achieving Goals and Outcomes. He is the current Chair of the Westmead ICU Sustainability Committee and was awarded Best Safety and Quality Paper at the 2024 ANZICS ASM as a co-presenter. David also chairs a Westmead ICS Clinical Products and Equipment Committee, is an interim Chair of the Westmead WHS Committee, and he is a member of the WSLHD Sustainability Committee, the NSW Health Sustainability Network, and of the ACI Environmental Sustainability Advisory Group for NSW. Davids goal for sustainability is to drive improvement in financial and procurement decision-making in critical care towards a cheaper and environmentally safe future.
Suchit is an experienced health service executive with a demonstrated history of improving quality and outcomes across healthcare. He has a background in Mental Health, Drug & Alcohol, and has led health organisations through wide-ranging changes, including redevelopments implementation of new models of care, and managing the COVID-19 pandemic in both a metropolitan CALD community and in rural remote NSW. With a Master’s Degree focused on Health Service Management, Suchit strives to deliver safe and innovative healthcare. Currently, he is the Director of Safety and Quality Improvement Systems for the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care. Suchit is also a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors
Dr Santosh Verghese serves as the Chief Medical Information Officer (CMIO) for South Australia Health (SA Health), where he brings a wealth of experience in both medicine and health information technology.
After completing his undergraduate medical studies and postgraduate physician training in India, he moved to Australia to complete his fellowship in Intensive Care Medicine. He is a fellow of the College of Intensive Care Medicine and works part time as an Intensive Care Specialist at Flinders Medical Centre, a university hospital south of Adelaide.
In his capacity as CMIO, Dr. Verghese spearheads initiatives aimed at integrating health information technology into clinical workflows to enhance patient care, streamline processes, and improve overall healthcare delivery across South Australia. He collaborates closely with healthcare providers, IT professionals, and government agencies to implement electronic health records, telehealth solutions, and data analytics tools that empower clinicians and support evidence-based decision-making. He is a vocal advocate for the responsible use of data and technology in healthcare emphasizing patient privacy, security, and equitable access to care.
Dr. Verghese leads a team of passionate clinical and technology professionals in leveraging technology to enhance patient care, streamline operations, and advance healthcare outcomes across South Australia.
Mary has been nursing for 29 years. She qualified from King’s College Hospital in London in 1995.
Moved to Australia in 1998 and has worked as a Registered Nurse in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Canberra.
She started her ICU career in 1999 at the Royal Brisbane Hospital and worked as a Clinical Nurse until her move to Canberra in 2013. She has worked as a Research Coordinator and Data Manager for ICU at The Canberra Hospital since 2014.
Maurice is an Intensivist at The Alfred Hospital. He completed a Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery at the Australian National University and undertook intensive care medicine training in several hospitals throughout Australia as well as overseas. Maurice has completed a Masters in Public Health at the University of Sydney and the Harvard Certificate Program in Safety, Quality, Informatics and Leadership. He is currently Deputy Director of the ICU (Quality and Risk) and has clinical interests in quality, safety and innovation in healthcare, organ donation and patient deterioration.
Penny Stewart is an Intensivist working in Alice Springs for 20 years. Her main interests are in promoting workforce development to improve access to care in rural areas. Her clinical interests include improving the understanding of the impact of poverty on critical care, improving cultural, safety and understanding the effect of bias on decision-making and improving clinical reasoning so that we can make better end-of-life decisions and reduce excessive treatments when of little benefit.
Penny recognises the challenges in rural Australia will be greater in regards to climate change but the advancement of technology with improved telemedicine and improved networks between tertiary and rural hospitals could improve healthcare dramatically if implemented with understanding and co-operation.
David is an Intensive Care Specialist at The Alfred Hospital in Melbourne. His interests include ICU outcome monitoring, severity of illness assessment, organ donation, lung transplantation and ECMO. He trained in respiratory, general and intensive care medicine in the United Kingdom and Australia.
He is the Chairman of the Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Society (ANZICS) Centre for Outcome and Resource Evaluation Clinical Quality Registry. He is a medical advisor to DonateLife in Victoria, Adjunct Clinical Professor at Monash University, Vice-President of ANZICS and recently stepped down as Clinical Lead for the Safer Care Victoria Critical Care Clinical Network. In 2022, he was awarded the Australian Council for Healthcare Standards Gold Medal for contribution to Safety and Quality.
He has co-authored over 380 publications including papers in New England Journal of Medicine and Journal of the American Medical Association, has written six book chapters, supervised nine PhD students and received over $35 million in competitive and government grants since 2000 but what he really enjoys doing when not in the ICU, is burying himself deep in data with biostatisticians, data scientists and clinicians.
Alex is co-director of the ICU in Wellington, medical director of the Aeromedical Retrieval Service, and most recently Chair of the national Critical Care Advisory Group to the Ministry of Health. The latter was formed in 2021 to provide oversight of the half billion dollar national Critical Care expansion programme that has increased New Zealand’s critical care capacity by 30%.
He trained in London, Melbourne and Wellington and was involved in the design and implementation of hospital rapid response systems in several countries. In this capacity, he led the New Zealand Health Quality & Safety Commission’s national Deteriorating Patient programme for 5 years. This led to the national roll-out of an evidence-based Early Warning Score, a standardised vital signs chart, kōrero mai – a patient & family escalation system, and a national Shared Goals of Care programme to ensure the treatment provided was both wanted and warranted.
His career highlight remains providing intensive care to a chimpanzee in Wellington Zoo. He lives by the sea, with two daughters, and an ageing Labrador.
• Associate Professor University of Sydney School of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine and Health
• Director of the ACHS Improvement Academy
Bernie Harrison has over 30 yrs of experience in health care, as a clinician, researcher and quality and safety (Q&S) expert.
She has extensive experience in designing and delivering Q&S training programs in the Asia Pacific region. Her training in quality improvement and patient safety occurred in the USA in 2001 and 2010 as a Fulbright Scholar. She has extensive experience in healthcare system redesign and has published a Breakthrough Collaborative (Harrison et al Vox Sanguinis 2014) in improving red cell transfusion in the elective surgical setting. She co-authored the Quality in Australian Health Care Study (MJA 1995), the most cited paper in the journal’s 100yr history.
Her previous positions include Executive Director of Hospital Performance for the National Health Performance Authority and Director of the NSW Clinical Excellence Commission. Her clinical experience as a registered nurse and midwife in the UK and Australia: maternity and child health, intensive care, aged care and mental health.
Program Manager, Australian Institute of Health
Innovation Faculty of Medicine Macquarie University
Peter Hibbert started his health career as a physiotherapist working in Australia and the United Kingdom for 12 years. Currently, he supports Chief Investigators to manage a $10.8 million grant researching translating safe care into practice. He was an author of the Care Track Australia study – the first population-based multi-condition study of the level of evidence-based care delivered to Australian patients.
He has worked as patient safety consultant and an ACHS presenter running training programs in root cause analysis and patient safety. Prior to these roles, he was the Associate Director of Patient Safety at the National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) in London, England where he led and managed clinical teams aiming to reduce preventable patient harm in health care across England and Wales.
Paul advises on risk and regulation around operationalising ESG. He loves to wrangle complex and interconnected issues.
With a background in competition law, he is passionate about anticipating and helping to manage risk for clients from emerging sources, including regulatory investigations, and defending enforcement action under competition, consumer and securities laws. Paul’s specialties include: ESG, risk & regulatory, antitrust, competition law, governance frameworks, securities regulation, executive accountability frameworks.
David Crosbie trained in internal medicine and then intensive care at St Vincent’s, the Austin and the Royal Adelaide Hospitals. He has been a full-time staff intensivist at the Northern Hospital in Epping (NHE) since February 2012 and a visiting intensivist at the Austin Hospital since March 2017. He is also the NHE medical donation specialist.
David oversees the MET service at NHE, supporting our ICU liaison nurses and maintaining our database. He has a longstanding interest in the epidemiology of deteriorating patients and patient goals of care and has published in this area.
He is passionate about teaching and instructing in ALS, APLS and BASIC and directs the REACT course (cath lab emergencies) at NHE.
David has a special interest in paediatrics, fostered by a sabbatical at Evelina Children’s Hospital in London in 2019 where I spent time in PICU and paediatric anaesthesia.
Steve is an intensive care physician and infectious diseases physician at The Alfred Hospital in Melbourne. He is the director of The Alfred ICU, a 68-bed quaternary ICU specialising in trauma, advanced cardiac support, ECMO and burns.
Steve has also worked for the World Health Organisation in the health emergencies and pandemic preparedness program. He was the chair of the ANZICS COVID-19 guideline committee and is the current Clinical Director of the Australian Living Evidence Collaboration including the COVID-19 National Clinical Evidence Taskforce. He has been the lead author of the Australian Therapeutic Guidelines Sepsis chapter for the past 8 years and is also an author of the most recent version of the Surviving Sepsis Guideline. He has completed a Masters of Public Health and a Masters of International Health Leadership. In 2022, he became a member of the College of Intensive Care Board.
Steve has an amazing wife and three awesome kids, who are much better than him at everything.
Wilson Low is the project officer who manages the ANZICS Patient Reported Outcomes and Experience Measures (PROEMs) Project for both the adult and paediatric ICU populations in Australia and New Zealand. Wilson was a clinical registry and research manager for the Malaysia Ministry of Health and an international Clinical Research Organisation before migrating to Australia in 2016. Since then, he worked for the Monash Children’s Cancer Centre as a Clinical Research Coordinator before joining ANZICS in 2021. Wilson has diverse clinical research experience in the government, academic and pharmaceutical sectors, with special interests in clinical registry, research management and data analysis.
Shaila is a public health professional with experience in diverse health-related domains like pharmaceuticals, research centres and Information Technology. She has gathered valuable knowledge on managing large data analytics and informatics projects. She has contributed towards the enhancement of ANZICS CORE Registry infrastructure for the last 15 years. She is currently in a General Manager role. In her current role, she is responsible for overall management of the Registries as well as scoping, planning, and implementing informatics projects across all CORE Registries. Previously she has worked with Moffitt Cancer Center as a statistical analyst, with Wyeth Pharmaceuticals as a SAS consultant and at United States Pharmacopeia (USA).
Nicky is an intensivist and the Director of Sunshine ICU in Melbourne. She has a strong interest in advanced communication skills, ICU culture and staff well-being. Her other interests are safety and quality, and obstetric critical care. She is the current Chair of the Western Health Deteriorating Patient Committee and the Victorian representative on the ANZICS safety and quality committee. Nicky is passionate about making long-lasting, meaningful change, and creating a strong culture of trust, collaboration and learning in the workplace.
Gary Blackburn is an ICU Liaison Nurse Practitioner and is the clinical lead for the Western Health Critical Care Outreach team. The team compromises of 21 ICU liaison nurse consultants who service both Footscray and Sunshine sites, including the John Kirner Women’s and Children’s Health.
Functions of the service include:
- Supporting nursing and medical colleagues managing patients with complex care needs.
- Attending all Medical Emergency/Code blue/family-activated call for help calls across the service (approximately a total of 9000 calls a year across the two campuses)
- provide formal and informal education to the workforce-especially in regards to detecting and managing the deteriorating patient.
He’s passionate about patient safety and best evidence quality care and has recently published a paper on Proactive rounding: Perspectives and experiences of nurses and midwives working in a large metropolitan hospital. He also has an interest in how digital health can assist in proactively identifying patients before a rapid response team activation.
Jason graduated in Medicine from the University of Glasgow in 1995 and completed specialist training and dual accreditation in Anaesthetics and Intensive Care in Liverpool in 2006. He has spent the last 17 years at the Alfred, in various leadership roles and currently as a Senior lntensivist. Additionally, he is the Clinical Director of Holmesglen Private ICU and the previous Director of Adult Retrieval Victoria, Ambulance Victoria.
Jason has a keen interest in systems and processes to achieve excellence in patient care and completed a post-graduate Engineering Diploma in Process Excellence and Lean Six Sigma.
In the role of ARV Director, during the COVID-19 Pandemic, Jason chaired the Victorian ICU Directors Cluster daily meeting and had a central role in developing and launching the CHRIS platform and facilitating ICU load balancing.
Professor Deepak Bhonagiri is the Chair of the ANZICS Safety and Quality Committee and a senior Intensivist from Sydney Australia. His research interests include rapid response systems, teleICU, artificial intelligence and remote monitoring. He is the Net Zero Environmental Sustainability lead for Intensive Care at NSW Health and is undertaking multiple projects to promote environmental sustainability in ICU. He is on the Board of Director and a Clinical Director for Critical Care in South Western Sydney Local Health District and leads many quality improvement projects to improve safety and quality as well as patient and clinician experience in this culturally and linguistically diverse population. He recently completed his terms as an examiner for the Fellowship exam of the College of Intensive Care Medicine and mentors students and young research candidates in higher degree research.