Critical Care is made up of a dedicated team of consultants, nurses, ward managers and practice educators.
Click on the names and headings below to learn more about our team:
- Rachael Speirs - Matron
- Dr Richard Benson - Clinical Director
- Dr Matthew Atkinson
- Dr Richard Benson
- Dr Sri Chukkambotla
- Dr Sarah J Clarke
- Dr Iain Crossingham
- Dr Paul Dean
- Dr Anton Krige
- Dr Peter McDermott
- Dr Helen Makin
- Dr Dominic Sebastian
- Dr Matthew Smith
- Dr Ian Stanley
- Dr Nicholas Truman
- Dr David Watson
- Dr James Watts
- Dr Haroon Waqar-Uddin
- Dr Mo Hatab
- Lesley Adamson
- Lil Casey
- Claire Skinner
- Lynsey Kirkham
- Sarah Pickens
- David Smith
- Alison Yates
- Jeanette Williams-Denton
- Christine Fothergill
- Yvonne McKean
- Martin Bland
Research Team
Click on the names below to learn more about our research team:
Role: Critical Care Research Lead and ICU Consultant
About:
Nick Truman is a consultant in critical care and anaesthetics with a specialist interest in critical research. He is the medical research lead for critical care at East Lancashire NHS Hospital Trusts. During his time as research lead he has actively supported and encouraged an proactive research culture within the department. He has built a team of doctors and research nurses within the department and is responsible for the conduct and delivery of a number of NIHR and ICNARC sponsored clinical trials.
He is the principle investigator for a number of studies covering areas such as critical care, rehabilitation, anaesthetics and COVID research. He has supported other colleagues in their role as PI and has successfully mentored several junior doctors and allied health professionals through the associate PI role.
He has been involved in clinical research throughout his medical career and has experience in phase 2-4 clinical drug trials and NIHR critical care portfolio studies. He also has experience of managing large cohort studies and is a named author on three research papers and two case reports. He has also presented several research posters at national and international conferences.
Role: Researcher and ICU Consultant
About:
Dr Krige is one of East Lancs longest serving Critical care consultants. He has been a key proponent and visionary for much of his prolific research career. Hailing from South Africa, Dr Krige moved to the north of England in 1996 in the pursuit of his anaesthetic and critical care dreams.
He has introduced, championed and innovated several practices at East Lancs including CPEX (Cardio-Pulmonary exercise) testing, the use of ultrasound in line insertions, the use of minimally invasive cardiac monitoring, Enhanced recovery after surgery protocol and the use of rectus sheath blocks in abdominal surgery amongst many others.
He has held many roles across the country from being president of the NW Anaesthesia Trainee Research Network (NWRAG,) to university roles at UCLAN and national roles at the National Institute of Health and Care Research (NIHR.) Dr Krige has multiple publications & prizes to his name he regularly lectures at international conferences around the world.
He is a reviewer for the Journal of Intensive care medicine and editor of the “Anaesthesia for major abdominal surgery” textbook. Dr Krige continues to champion research locally as an academic supervisor for our academic medical trainees and research clinical fellow, helping develop the next generation of researchers to flourish.
Dr Krige has been a Principle Investigator (PI) for a number of trials in the past, is currently PI for the Vitdalize trial and has a number of active research projects running.
Role: ELHT Head of Research and ICU Consultant
Role: ICU Consultant
About:
Dr Smith is one of the youngest consultants in the East Lancs Critical care team but his youth deceives his research experience and capability. A key part of our research team at East Lancashire, Matthew oversees the Mosaicc trial as its Principal Investigator (PI).
Before joining the team as a consultant, Dr smith also held the research fellow position in critical care, working on several studies alongside Dr Krige.
Role: ICU Consultant
About:
Haroon is one of our great critical care consultants at East Lancashire hospitals trust. He is always keen to be involved in research, helping identify patients that could be recruited to different clinical trials.
He is currently the Principal Investigator for the Phind Trial and is part of our monthly research meetings.
Role: ICU Consultant
About:
Dr Atkinson is part of our amazing critical care consultant team at East Lancashire Hospitals Trust. Alongside his clinical duties as an anaesthetist and critical care consultant, Matthew is the local college tutor for non-consultant doctors working in critical care and has recently taken over as Principal Investigator for the SIGNET trial.
Role: Lead clinical research nurse critical care over multiple trials, API for UK ROX trial, experienced critical care nurse
About: I have been qualified as a nurse for the last 18 years. Initially I took the diploma route in to nursing and then topped this up to a degree. The majority of my employment has been in the critical care unit. I worked within critical care for 14 years and in the final year I held both critical and research post part time.
In 2020, I joined the Acute research team and became the research nurse for critical care. I became the first research nurse to gain API status. and this was with the UK ROX trial. At the moment I manage a large successful portfolio of critical care trials and occasionally assist with team trials too.
Role: Advanced Clinical Care Practitioner and Mosaicc Associate PI
About:
Tricia is a pioneering advanced clinical care practitioner, having been one of the first in the country to hold the role. She has a passion about delivering quality care and improving patient safety for all patients in her care.
Hailing from Burnley, Tricia completed her nursing degree at Sheffield University, and spent 12 years as a Critical Care nurse at Royal Blackburn, climbing to a band 6 nurse position. After completing two Masters degrees, Tricia expanded her field of expertise, spending a further 12 years at Salford Royal in their General and Neurosurgical Critical care unit.
Tricia has now returned home to East Lancashire critical care where she not only is an integral part of our clinical team, but also our research team. Whilst new to research, Tricia has learnt quickly and is now the Associate Principal Investigator for the MOSAICC trial and assists with recruitment of the other trials ongoing on the East Lancashire Critical Care Unit.
Role: Critical care pharmacist and REMAP-CAP Associate PI
About:
Shaun has been the Critical Care pharmacist at ELHT since February 2019. His interest in research was started during the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic adapted his role as Critical Care pharmacist and focused his interest on the clinical trials being conducted on the unit.
It also made him think differently to generate the evidence base for new treatments. Shaun reviewed and implemented protocols for RECOVERY and REMAP-CAP which included prescribing, administering and storage of IMPs. He has subsequently undertaken the API scheme with REMAP-CAP to have a better understanding of how a trial is conducted at a centre.
Shaun also has another role within the Lancashire and South Cumbria Critical Care Network to harmonise how we procure, prescribe and administer medicines for patients through developing Clinical Guidelines and Critical Care Drug Monographs on each unit with input from our pharmacist, prescribing and nursing colleagues.
Outside of research, Shaun is involved in audit work across the network and has recently audited the use of continuous infusions of vancomycin and missed doses on our units. He also teaches on the Graduate Certificate in Critical Care Nursing at the University of Central Lancashire and undergraduate Masters of Pharmacy (MPharm) degree.
Role: ICU Nurse
About:
Victoria has been a qualified as a nurse 23 years, with a Bachelor of Science (Nursing Practice) Degree with honours. She did her dissertation in Research.
Vicky has predominately worked in Critical care for most of the 23 years but have done 6 years in Cardiothoracic Critical Care being an ECMO Specialist and one year in ED.
She has been a Band 6 nurse in Royal Blackburn critical care for over seven years. Vicky has been working with us in the Research Team for almost a year, completed her GCP training in June 2022 and has have been involved in the UK-ROX, EXACT trials, and MOSAICC. She will be key part of our upcoming EVIS trial.
Role: Research Clinical Fellow and ICU Junior Clinical Fellow
About:
Qasim is the newest member of our research team and is one of our promising junior clinical fellows in Critical care. Born in Rochdale, Qasim completed his medical school training at the university of Manchester and completed his foundation training at ELHT.
He worked as part of the critical care team during the start of the Covid-19 pandemic as one of our redeployed trainees, and it was during this period he realised his interest in critical care medicine as a speciality.
Alongside his role as the research clinical fellow, Qasim continues to work on the critical care units, and has a role in medical education where he oversees a shadowing scheme for final year Lancaster/UCLAN medical students as well as teaching pre-clinical year medical students at the University of Manchester.
Additionally, Qasim is a qualified, registered pharmacist and so brings key skills from the world of pharmacy to aid our research practice on critical care.