Professor Shondipon Laha, Critical Care Consultant with Lancashire Teaching Hospitals, hopes to leave a legacy that will benefit patients and staff locally and nationally after being named the new president of the Intensive Care Society (ICS).
Professor Laha took up the position on Monday 2 December in London, at the society’s annual members’ meeting, beginning a two-year term.
While the appointment is a big personal achievement, Professor Laha feels it also showcases some outstanding work done at the Trust and in the intensive care department, and how both have heavily supported multiprofessional working and diversity.
He becomes the second individual of Asian origin to hold this prestigious position, and that is something he is proud of: “We were one of the first societies to have a female president, and I’ll be the second Asian president after Ganesh Suntharalingam.
“It is important to me. It’s given me the chance to say ‘if I can do something like that...’ and it’s allowed other people to think they can do that as well.”
Professor Laha is eager to make a difference and feels there is much good practice to draw upon from within the Trust: “It’s great to have someone from Preston as president of something nationally., Respiratory have had Professor Munavvar as president of the British Thoracic Society, and now you have a plethora of us – myself, Shashi Chandrashekaraiah on the board of the Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine, Irfan Chaudry who is the Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) lead and the new Women and Intensive Care Medicine chair, Cath Roberts. We’re one of the second or third biggest Trusts in the North West and the biggest ICU.
“The society has a publication called GPICS, General Principles of Intensive Care Units, which sets the standards for every aspect of intensive care - staffing, ventilators, beds, how we treat the different aspects. Where we are often lacking – and our Trust is probably leading in – is the multi-professional aspect, it’s clear most units don’t have psychologists, and we have had one since the 1980s. Most units don’t have dedicated pharmacists, physios, OTs, speech and language – we have all these, and we’ve fed into the ICS structure, making sure that it is done nationally.”
“The Trust and the ICS have both enabled the many professions of critical care to be developed – the current ICS Professional Affairs Groups have representatives from Lancashire Teaching Hospitals, Specialty and Associate Specialist (SAS) doctors, Advanced Critical Care Practitioners (ACCPs) and Pharmacists, and in the past had Speech and Language Therapist (SLTs) representatives too.”
Professor Laha is looking forward to getting his teeth into the role and is excited about what can be achieved: “We want to try and set out standards that anyone can replicate. We have to hold each other up and that will be one of my responsibilities – no one fails until everyone fails, so we make sure every unit is functioning and is supported by as many of us as possible, and we communicate between networks. We know our standards are being spread out and people aren’t being excluded, and there is a lot of potential.
“It’s a two-year job and I’m very excited by it. There are a lot of projects that won’t just help the ICS, I see them helping the Trust. I see it as a very useful relationship.”
Being able to make an impact on a wider scale is something else which appeals to him: “This gives me the opportunity to leave a legacy that I think will help patients and staff locally and nationally.
“It’s mind-blowing the stuff I get to do. You can change stuff if you’re passionate about it, and this is the joy of it, that we can make things better.”
