Mastering Intensive Care 003 with Rinaldo Bellomo

In this Mastering Intensive Care episode, Prof Rinaldo Bellomo from the Austin Hospital in Melbourne, Australia describes how he has always had an enquiring mind and how he judges himself with respect to his ability to be caring, compassionate, competent, communicative and collegial, both professionally and personally.

Prof Rinaldo Bellomo discusses topics such as: how an experience as a 5th medical student sparked his interest in intensive care medicine; how intensive care has become more safe as technological advancements have occurred; how he seeks feedback from colleagues; how to give feedback and how it needs to be helpful in nature; what his daily routine is; how being at the bedside is so important to excellent clinical care; how experience has helped him deal with stress more easily but makes fatigue a bigger issue; how doing research is the basis of his stress management program; what his out of work pursuits are and how he’d love to have a 30 hour day. He carefully describes the process he uses in his end of life family conversations and astutely points out that end of life care can never be rushed.

The interview concludes with Rinaldo’s hope that he be known for his continuous desire to ask “how do we know that we know this” at the patient’s bedside (which has no doubt fuelled his enormously successful research career) and precisely what he thinks all doctors could do to help them become more humble. This is an outstanding conversation about compassionate clinical care with one of the best intensive care researchers in the world who is also one of the great mentors of our time.

My genuine hope with the Mastering Intensive Care podcast is to inspire and empower you to bring your best self to the ICU by listening to the perspectives of such thought-provoking guests as Wes Ely. I passionately believe we can all get better, both as carers and as people, so we can do our absolute best for those patients whose lives are truly in our hands.

Feel free to leave a comment on the Facebook “mastering intensive care” page, on the LITFL episode page, on Twitter using #masteringintensivecare, or by sending me an email at andrewATmasteringintensivecare.com.

Further reading and listening

• Full podcast collection on LITFL and Libsyn
• More conversation on Twitter (@andrewdavies66) and Facebook