There’s no such thing as a typical day for Liesje Andre, Senior Resuscitation Officer for Great Ormond Street Hospital in London.
Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) is located in London and is an international centre of excellence in child healthcare. The hospital is dedicated to finding new and better ways to treat childhood illnesses and receives more than 268,000 patient visits every year - including patients from all over the UK and from overseas.
It’s enough to keep anyone busy - and Liesje is no exception. Any given day sees her training, reviewing cardiac arrests, keeping on top of overall management, writing policies and keeping up to date on, and implementing, positive change. She is also a member of the cardiac arrest team, poised to react to any challenges that come their way.
Every morning starts with Liesje working with the team and delegating roles. Ideally there are three members of the team working and they share the jobs including training in the classroom, carrying the cardiac arrest bleep and reviewing 2222 calls from the previous 24 hours. This person will also carry out just-in-time training for any patients identified at the clinical emergency team brief in the morning - these are the patients who are concerning from a deterioration point of view and marked as a “watcher”. Another team member will be working on the current improvement project; recently, this has been sepsis and tracheostomy care.
A large portion of the day is dedicated to overall management. This week, she’s reviewing the emergency procedure / equipment required for the new build and preparing to say goodbye to 50% of the team as they are all leaving to go on maternity leave at the same time! Next is preparing orientation for the new members starting and keeping on top of a never-ending stream of emails without letting them influence her overall timeframes.
Training is a key element of her day and her role at GOSH - and it’s rarely limited to the classroom. Liesje’s work with training also includes reviewing cardiac arrests and training on the wards. At Great Ormond Street Hospital, they deliver core skills training of levels 1,2,3 and all qualified nurses attend a PILS course annually. Those in charge of a ward and the cardiac team attend EPALS and do just-in-time training and in-situ training.
But it’s not just training for Liesje and her team. Every week she participates in a risk meeting attended by other professions from across the trust. These meetings are an excellent opportunity for those in the trust to review all of the cardiac arrests which have occurred that week to see if there are any patterns or common themes, and in order to see a 360 degree view of the incident.
There are also ongoing projects which Liesje and her team is working on - including finishing up the implementation of sepsis protocol at GOSH, changing the early warning score system (which is being done through a working group), standardising tracheostomy care, in-situ situation training, and the implementation of the ReSPECT process into GOSH.
Somehow, Liesje still finds time to continue training throughout the resuscitation community, regularly teaching GIC and APLS, and occasionally finds herself teaching dentists and parents of patients with complex needs.
The lively Liesje is enthusiastic about the work she does and everything that comes her way - but when asked about the best part of her job, an even bigger huge smile breaks out across her face. ‘I love the team I work with!’ she says, ‘I never take it for granted that, as a team, we work well.’
