Sarah Bean
Critical Care Research Nurse at Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust
Since 2016 Sarah has been an embedded member of the Critical Care Research team at Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust and is Lead Nurse for Critical Care Follow-up.
Sarah received the Society of Devon Intensivists Therapists bursary in 2017 for her work in the follow-up clinic at Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust. In 2018 Sarah was invited to give an oral presentation at the 31st annual congress of European Society of Intensive Care Medicine (ESICM) on her project titled ‘Learning from within: a quality improvement programme to identify and address key themes for successful critical care rehabilitation.’
During the Pandemic Sarah became a member of the Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine working group tasked with improving the information on critical illness that is available for patients, their families and healthcare workers. Videos of previous patients from the follow-up clinic at Royal Cornwall Hospital form part of the Faculty’s resources for patients and relatives. They can be accessed at For Patients | The Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine (ficm.ac.uk)
Eliza Bell
Transplant Recipient, Podcaster, Coach and Advocate
Quite simply Eliza is changing the narrative for those on the transplant wait list and post donation. Through her positive mindset and unique approach, she empowers those who lose their voices through the devastating news of needing an organ transplant.
David Cain
Critical Care and Anaesthesia consultant at Royal Cornwall Hospital
David is Peninsula sub-region lead for the South West Critical Care Network, chairs the SWCCN transfer committee and works for the Retrieve transfer service. His areas of interest include Sepsis, Immunology and Perioperative Medicine.
Charly Gibson
Consultant in Intensive Care Medicine and Anaesthesia at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital since 2016
Charly graduated from Sheffield Medical School, trained in intensive care and anaesthesia in the South-West of England and has recently returned from a sabbatical in Auckland. His clinical interests include echocardiography, point-of-care ultrasound, research and training. He gets upset if he is ever too far from the sea or misses out on going to SODIT.
Michael Griksaitis
Consultant Paediatric Intensivist at Southampton Children's Hospital
With a specific interest in cardiac ICU and transport medicine and point of care ultrasound. He is the clinical lead for the Southampton Oxford Retrieval Team (SORT) in Wessex and the national chair of the Paediatric Critical Care Society Acute Transport Group (PCCS-ATG). He is also a honorary senior clinical lecturer in the Faculty of Medicine at Southampton, as the deputy lead for year 4 of the undergraduate medicine degree. Outside of work he is an avid traveller and hiker with his dog!
Kate Jenkins
Consultant Clinical Psychologist
Specialised in working with patients with physical health problems when she completed her Doctorate at Southampton University.
She has worked at Salisbury District Hospital since 2006 and is the Lead Psychologist for ITU and Cancer services, as well as providing psychological assessment and interventions to patients with other physical health problems across the hospital.
Kate developed a training package in 2008 which was designed to help frontline health and social care staff detect and manage psychological distress in cancer patients and their family members, which has been adopted across the UK and is cited in National Peer Review Measures as a gold standard. More recently she has developed a Resilience Training Package for staff which has been running since 2016.
Kate drew on the principles of this Resilience programme when supporting staff through the Novichok poisoning crisis in Salisbury in 2018 and is using the lessons learned from this to inform staff wellbeing initiatives in response to the Covid pandemic.
Natalie Pattison
Professor of Clinical Nursing
Professor Natalie Pattison is a clinical academic who has worked clinically in cancer, critical care and critical care outreach. She is a Professor of Clinical Nursing with a joint appointment across the University of Hertfordshire and East and North Herts NHS Trust. She is the clinical lead for critical care follow-up services, combining this with a research role. Her research interests focus on her clinical area of critical care and critically ill ward patients, end of life in critical care. She is widely published in critical care supportive care. She is Chair of the National Outreach Forum, immediate past-Chair of UK Critical Care Research Group, and Chair of UK Critical Care Nursing Alliance. She is also Deputy Lead for the National Institute for Health Research National Specialty Group for Critical Care.
Laura Penhaul
Lead Physiotherapist
Laura Penhaul has led the first all-female crew to row the Pacific. Supported gold medal wins at four Paralympic and Olympic Games in a Lead Physio role and supported in the achievement of world records and tennis ranking improvements as a Performance Manager. Now, Laura is drawing on her personal and professional experience and expertise in high performance sports and expeditions, to go shoulder to shoulder with individuals and teams, to optimise their human potential and support them to cross their own Pacific.
‘Everyone was struck by Laura’s humility, honesty and deep truths from the Pacific. I recall one of the crew saying they would follow her anywhere, that leadership was so tangible yesterday. Losing sight of Shore spoke volumes to me.’ Andrew Dunnett, Group Director Foundations at Vodafone.
Laura was the Team Leader of the Coxless Crew who set 2 World Records in January 2016. They rowed unsupported across the Pacific. 9,000nm, taking 9 months to complete and 4 years to prepare for. This remarkable expedition was captured in the Netflix documentary “Losing Sight of Shore”.
Laura previously was Lead Physiotherapist for the Paralympic Programme of British Athletics and worked at Vancouver, London and Rio Paralympic Games. She then went on to be Lead Physiotherapist for the Olympic British Sailing Team, supporting them through to what was Tokyo 2020.
In 2017, Laura was the Performance Manager for Mark Beaumont, where she supported him in his preparations and during his World Record achievement of cycling the World in 78 Days. Laura was also Naomi Osaka’s Performance Manager in her lead up to being world no.1. Laura is now a Performance Consultant across various sectors, with the aim to improving human potential.
In her spare time, you’ll find Laura on the North coast of Cornwall in the UK, where she’s an RNLI lifeboat crew volunteer (coastguard rescue equivalent in the US) and loves to stay active running or sea swimming on the coastline.
Felicity Plaat
Consultant Anaesthetist at Queen Charlotte’s & Hammersmith Hospitals in London
Felicity is the immediate past president of the Obstetric Anaesthetists’ Association, elected Council member of the RCoA and on the Editorial board of IJOA.
Shi is an assessor for MBRRACE, represents obstetric anaesthesia at the RCoA’s Anaesthesia Clinical services accreditation scheme, and is one of the editors of GPAS obstetrics chapter.
An obsession with safe maternity care has resulted in many years’ involvement in multidisciplinary training both in the UK and in resource poor and conflict zones across the world.
Current areas of interest include multidisciplinary management of the obstetric critically ill patient and victims of trauma and reducing the incidence of pain during Caesarean section.
Neil Powell
Consultant Antimicrobial Pharmacist at the Royal Cornwall Hospital
Neil also has a role in antimicrobial stewardship across the Integrated Care System in Cornwall and Cornwall’s One Health group which has a view on antibiotic use in animals, environmental transfer of antibiotic resistant bacteria as well as human antibiotic use.
Neil has a growing interest in antibiotic stewardship research and holder of an NIHR/HEE Doctoral Fellowship looking at penicillin allergy de-labelling as part of antibiotic stewardship programs. He is also co-applicant/Principal Investigator on two NIHR funded penicillin allergy de-label studies (SPACE & ALABAMA) and co-applicant on the NIHR funded procalcitonin in COVID-19 study (PEACH).
Mark Richards
Retired Maritime Civil Engineer, Artist & Swimmer
Mark Richards really loves the ocean. He moved to Cornwall in 1985 to fulfil his passion for surfing, which he still loves today. His working life as a civil engineer was largely based around offshore construction and marine geotechnics. He was involved in drilling projects from Antarctica to the North Pole and many points in between. Marine construction projects for oil and gas platforms, offshore wind turbines ports and harbours all over the world kept him close to the sea.
In 2012 (at age 51) he rekindled his childhood love of swimming to regain fitness for surfing and quickly found that he loved the adventure and deep connection with the ocean that it offered. His swimming goals quickly became bolder and amongst other adventures, he’s completed a staged swim around the whole of Cornwall and in 2019 became the first man to swim the 28 miles from Lands End to the Isles of Scilly.
He’s a keen musician and, now retired from marine construction, works as an artist at his home in Perranporth. He makes, you guessed it, mixed media wall art and furniture representing waves, our coastline and islands.
Rebecca Tolmon
Specialist Nurse Organ Donation
Rebecca joined the South West Organ Donation team from a career in critical and palliative care. Her passion is providing choice in the end-of-life journey and saving lives through organ transplantation.
Dr Chris Langrish
Consultant in Critical Care Medicine
Dr Chris Langrish is a Consultant in Critical Care Medicine at Guys's and St Thomas' and the Royal Brompton Hospital and is network lead for SEL . He trained in London, Bristol and Australia. He has been involved in the national SRF service for over 10 years and has retrieved over 300 patients on ECMO.
Dr Jessie Welbourne
Consultant in Critical Care
Jessie is the Southwest Peninsula neuro ICU lead, having worked as a consultant in Plymouth since 2014 after an initial start in Cambridge NCCU. Her clinical practice includes general intensive care medicine, neuro intensive care and regular neuroanaesthesia with an interest in base of skull.
Her governance role includes producing and modifying protocols and pathways for the care of patients both in neuro ICU and following cranial surgery. She has led the department’s Neuro ACSA standards review on two occasions. She has assessed the quality of time critical transfers for patients with neurological injury before and after the introduction of Retrieve.
Jessie is a member of NACCS council and the lead for the NACCS LinkDrs. She has coordinated the creation of the RCoA and FICM curriculum based educational resource from NACCS.
Jessie is also an associate editor of the Journal of Intensive Care Medicine and the local PI for the SOS and VitDalize clinical trials.
Dr Rebecca Appleboam
Consultant in Critical Care
Rebecca Appelboam is a Consultant in Intensive Care on the Eastern site of the Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust (the service formerly known as Royal Devon and Exeter). She trained for an inordinately long period of time, mainly because she tried out medicine before training in anaesthesia and intensive care, which she did part time. As soon as she gained her CCT, she dropped anaesthetics, and as a consultant has practiced solely in Intensive Care Medicine. She leads the ICU follow up clinic for the Eastern Site. She is also Lead Medical Examiner for the merged Trust, and is a Trust appraiser.