Remembering to keep the patient at the centre of what we do

Mastering Intensive Care 057 with Georg Auzinger – Remembering to keep the patient at the centre of what we do

Those of you who are consultant intensivists or attendings hopefully remember most of your trainees – especially the ones you met when you were a brand new intensivist.

In this episode I speak with Dr Georg Auzinger who in 1997 moved from Austria to Australia to train in intensive care at the same ICU I was beginning my first job as a specialist intensivist. I have fond memories of working with Georg, have enjoyed the friendship we have developed and have been thrilled to see from afar how well his career has progressed.

Nowadays Georg has a senior position in the United Kingdom intensive care field where he is Consultant Honorary Senior Lecturer in Intensive Care Medicine, Lead Clinician at the Liver Intensive Care Unit and Director of the Veno Arterial ECMO service at King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust in London. He is PTEeXAM board certified for perioperative transoesophageal echocardiography and also leads on critical care echocardiography training.

Georg has played a substantial role in the outstanding international reputation the Liver Intensive Care Unit at King’s has maintained over the last decade. He is member and associate fellow of the UK Intensive Care Society, as well as member of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine, the Society of Critical Care Medicine, the Austrian Society of Internal Medicine and the International Liver Transplantation Society.

In this conversation, Georg and I do some reminiscing, as we talk about:

• His transition from doing general medicine in Austria to intensive care in Australia
• How he found his way to Kings College Hospital in London
• The changes in the last 2 decades in the types of patients being admitted to ICU
• The current resource constraints in the UK
• Working in the Clinical Director role in a busy institution
• How beneficial colleague performance reviews can be for both parties
• Relationship building between nurses and doctors
• Communicating with colleagues
• The importance of keeping the patient at the centre of what we do
• The difficulties he recognises in balancing his work and life

Links related to Georg Auzinger

• Dr Georg Auzinger at Kings College
• Kings College Hospital Liver ICU
• Persevering Through A Pandemic – 3 – Ultramarathon

Links to other resources (in order of mentioning)

• Prof Julia Wendon
• Cleveland Clinic London
• New Normal Project podcast
  

Further reading and listening

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