Chris Hebbes

Chris Hebbes

Academic anaesthetist and intensivist

CV

Dr Christopher P. Hebbes
MBChB BSc MMedSci (Medical Education) PhD FRCA FFICM

Joint anaesthetist and intensivist with experience and a track record in medical education, clinical research and data science and developing expertise in point of care echocardiography and ultrasound. I have furthered my academic experience by undertaking additional study to gain an intercalated BSc in opioid pharmacology, MMedSci in Medical Education and PhD in cardiovascular sciences. These additional skills in project management and delivery, data sciences and informatics have been invaluable in managing clinical projects, audit and quality improvement. I have a wide range of experience across clinical specialties, and particularly enjoy the challenges of acute care, emergency and vascular anaesthesia.

Education

Postgraduate
Undergraduate

Prizes and Awards

Professional Memberships and Affiliations

Clinical experience

Intensive Care Medicine

I have undertaken a varied program of training in both district general and university teaching hospitals. This has enabled me to engage with design and delivery of multiprofessional teaching, attending and contributing to management meetings, and intensive care multidisciplinary team meetings.

I am passionate about general intensive care, the delivery of evidence based exceptional care for a broad range of emergency and elective patients in collaboration with colleagues from other specialties and disciplines.

I have a particular interest in the use of ultrasound for diagnosis in critical care and the use of computers and information science for critical appraisal, ordering guidelines and information and data analysis.

My experience across tertiary centres has exposed me to effective multidisciplinary interventions on the intensive care, including full engagement with rehabilitation, early mobilisation, tailored nutrition and the use of post ICU clinics. I look forward to using this experience to improve patient outcomes. My clinical experience has included (the numbers below refer to WTE experience)

Anaesthesia

My interests in anaesthesia complement my interests in intensive care medicine. I further my ultrasound skills in anaesthesia, for regional techniques, vascular access and for dynamic patient assessment. I enjoy and have sought out additional experience of vascular and major general surgery, where I have developed my interest in ultrasound and focused echocardiography. I have a developing interest in bariatric surgery, and have written and research educational papers and a book chapter describing the challenges of pharmacology at extremes of weight.

I am committed to the evolution of Point of Care Ultrasound in critical care, and have completed Focused Intensive Care Echocardiography training, am a FICE mentor, and use these skills regularly and teach on the local FICM accredited FICE course. I intend to extend these skills to CUSIC, a future standard of ultrasound which will be a requirement for trainees in intensive care medicine, delivered by accredited units. I have completed a course, and am undertaking supervised practice to gain full accreditation and mentorship.

Management of the high risk general surgical emergency patient is a particular interest, and I am a faculty member for the national cross-specialty Care of the Critically Ill Surgical Patient (CCrISP) course, which I help to deliver locally.

My clinical experience has included

Qualifications and Training

Career summary

Current Employment

June 2020-Present: Consultant in Anaesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine, Leicester Royal Infirmary

January 2015-present: Clinical Lecturer in Anaesthesia and Intensive Care, Department of Cardiovascular Sciences, University of Leicester

December 2022-present: Training Programme Director, Acute Care Common Stem - NHS England, Workforce and Training Directorate (East Midlands)

Previous Employment

Additional Roles

Teaching and Medical Education

I am passionate about teaching medical and allied professionals at every level in small group, lecture and simulation based settings. Throughout my training I have contributed to teaching delivery, and latterly to the design and development of teaching sessions and courses. I hold an MMedSci (Medical Education), during which I developed an interest in supporting struggling students and mentoring (I am a qualified Egan mentor). My major interests in medical education are in simulation and technology enhanced learning (TEL), which I developed and utilised in various projects, which have been presented locally and nationally. Latterly, I have a developing interest in in-situ simulation and contributed to the delivery of a novel transfer simulation, used to train and assess intensive care trainees to undertake intrahospital transfers of critically unwell patients.

I occupied formal education posts as a clinical demonstrator, academic fellow in acute care common stem, and latterly a clinical lecturer. As a clinical demonstrator, I taught at undergraduate level in practical, small group, and lecture settings, and also designed, developed and implemented a clinical skills physiology series of practical sessions, the echocardiogram, and spirometry. I was a personal tutor for 8 years and had the privilege of supporting and supervising two groups of medical students through to graduation.

In addition to my experience of in-theatre and critical care teaching, I am faculty for our local Focussed Intensive Care Echocardiography (FICE) course, for which I am a FICM accredited mentor. I am also a Royal College of Surgeons accredited faculty to deliver the Care of the Critically Ill Surgical Patient (CCrISP) course locally.

I have a longer-term interest in Free Open Access Medical Education (FOAMED), the use of quality controlled, peer reviewed open access resources, in order to improve access to education, particularly in resource poor settings. Such resources can also be used to improve patient access to information, and to improve experience.

Experience

Qualifications and Training

Research

I have had additional time and training in research and have had the opportunity to learn about and use a variety of qualitative and quantitative methodologies, laboratory and clinical research. My training has included a formal research methods courses, and in-house research and statistics training gained through my intercalated BSc (in opioid pharmacology), MMedSci, and PhD.

I have completed a PhD using basic science methods to investigate the release of the peptide nociceptin from immune cells in sepsis. I gained a variety of technical lab skills during the implementation phase of this project, which latterly won funding from the Royal College of Anaesthetists Ernest Leech Fund, and gained portfolio sponsorship. As a translational project, this gave me a bridge to clinical research, and the skills to manage a research project from inception, necessary regulatory approvals through to implementation, in addition to my mandatory research training, ICH-GCP and Consent. The timespan of this project bridged major changes to the Health Research Agency (HRA) and GDPR regulations, which I successfully negotiated. The outputs from this research are currently in press, and have been presented at the British Journal of Anaesthesia Research Forum.

As an active researcher, I have aided on other clinical trials, including local Clinical Research Network adopted studies, such as the national iHype trial investigating adverse outcomes associated with intraoperative hypotension for which I advised colleagues locally, and collected, screened and input data.

Experience

Qualifications and Training

Management and Leadership

My management experience has grown with my role in trainee representation. As representative, secretary and chair of the East Midlands Group of Anaesthetists in Training (EMGAT), this has given me broad, transferrable managerial skills; chairing and hosting meetings, managing a group and presenting to a group. I led the design and development of the EMGAT website (www.emgat.org.uk), and in this role have contributed to a number of projects, including a bid for funding to support multidisciplinary education from Health Education England’s Curriculum underspend.

The role of chair has given me the opportunity to input to boards from the East Midlands School of Anaesthesia, Training Committee, and iTAPS. Within these organisations, current projects that I have contributed to include the development of a quality and improvement fellowship, improvement of induction for trainees, and the development of the school of anaesthesia’s online communication and training platform (based on Microsoft Office 365 and SharePoint).

I have led a number of high profile events, the Virtual Learning Environment Development Day, and co-led the East Midlands School of Anaesthesia Summer Meeting with another trainee. Both of these large events included working with teams from the school of anaesthesia, Health Education East Midlands and external suppliers, hotels, venues and audio-visual suppliers. These projects were delivered to time and received favourable feedback.

In experience of clinical management, my advanced ITU year gave me experience of both day-to-day clinical (and non-clinical) management of an intensive care unit, working with bed managers, other clinicians, units and the wider network in order to ensure patient safety and flow. I also gained experience of the broader view, longer term management and governance issues, including business cases and project management. As part of this, I researched and co-authored a guideline for the management of seizures in Critical Care within the Nottingham City Critical Care Department. I regularly attended and continued to unit meetings, morbidity and mortality and governance.

Experience

Qualifications and Training

Quality Improvement, Service Development and Audit

Throughout my training, I have had the opportunity to contribute and lead quality improvement in both anaesthesia and intensive care.

During my time at Nottingham City Hospital, I researched and wrote a guideline for the management of seizures in critical care and Nottingham City Hospital, interfacing with the hospital guideline for non-critical care areas. This was part of a project to manage risk associated with the previous protocol, and to unify management across clinical areas. This topic required a true multidisciplinary approach, with pharmacy, nursing staff and clinicians from neurology, the emergency department and intensive care. This guideline was subsequently approved and implemented. The drivers for this project included a requirement for a standardised approach across the organisation, a move to a simple regime, with a single dose and less clinical risk, and an improved side-effect profile, with negligible cost impact. The development of newer drugs and improved clinical experience since the previous guideline enabled this change to occur.

I am currently undertaking an enabling project to determine the incidence of hyperoxia in the intensive care unit. This was in response to the OXYGEN-ICU trial, demonstrating increased harm where patients are exposed to high concentrations of Oxygen. This project has demonstrated a significant incidence of hyperoxia on intensive care locally, and I am currently planning the next phase to encourage daily review and target setting for Oxygenation, proactive, protocol driven monitoring by bedside staff and education, with a reaudit following this. The work is a part of a larger project to standardise and optimise ventilation within critical care – particularly pertinent where doctors without a critical background may rotate through on secondment from other specialties or as part of the acute care common stem.

During my time at the Royal Derby Hospital I completed a quality improvement project to improve the patient experience for daycase procedures, with a “quick win” focusing on hydration. This used process mapping and patient follows in order to highlight areas for intervention to reduce preoperative dehydration, latterly implementing improved communication of list orders after the morning team briefing, explicit drinking instructions on patient letters, and empowering staff to ask the theatre teams about list orders.

Other local audits that I have completed throughout my training include audit (and reaudit) of trainee workload out of hours with a focus on patient safety and time to see critically ill patients, an audit of daily care bundle implementation on the intensive care unit and a reaudit of ventilator care bundles. My experiences of these projects have exposed me to the breadth of quality improvement activities, from initial conception, and data gathering, through to the (challenges associated with) implementation and change management, evaluation and presentation.

Summary of audit and quality improvement experience

Training and Qualifications

Presentations

Hebbes CP, Pharmacokinetics at extremes of weight. Royal College of Anaesthetists Updates day. Bristol, 2019

Hebbes CP, Perry R, Sloane N, Wilkinson A, Keeshan A. Hyperoxia on Intensive care, Too much of a good thing? Intensive Care Society State of the Art meeting, London, 2018 (poster)

Hebbes CP, What has research ever done for me? MERCAT study day, Derby, 2018 (oral)

Hebbes CP, Leighton R. Meeting the needs of trainees through online communication and collaboration tools. Royal College of Anaesthetist College tutor meeting, Leeds, 2018 (poster)

Hebbes CP, Support for Educational Supervisors, audit results. East Midlands School of Anaesthesia Winter Scientific Meeting 2014

Hebbes CP, Moodle: beyond the basics. Virtual Learning Environment workshop (East Midlands LETB VLE Development Day, 2013)

Malanjum, L. Hebbes, CP. Annemaneni R. Simulation-based training for critical care nurses in a cardiac intensive care unit: the development of non-technical skills in critical care (European Society of Intensive Care Medicine, 2013)

Hebbes CP, Mentoring: An old head on new shoulders, London Deanery Coaching and Mentoring Conference 2012

Hebbes CP. Student detection of errors in examinations. (Oral presentation, ASME, Edinburgh, 2011)

Hebbes CP. To Err is Human. (Oral presentation, Ottawa Medical Education meeting, Miami, 2010)

Giri P, Hebbes CP, Nicholson S, Sadler J, Williams G. Reaudit of protective lung ventilator strategies within UHL. (Oral presentation, Audit meeting, 2009)

Hebbes CP. Leighton R, Kumar N. The 5-step e-learning model to complement face-to-face teaching of clinical undergraduate medical students (Poster Presentation, eLearning in Health conference, Warwick, 2009)

Hebbes CP. Leighton R, Kumar N, Wright R. Evaluating e-learning to teach undergraduate airway management (Poster Presentation, ASME, Leicester, 2008)

Hebbes CP. Loryman B. Re-audit of the management of sepsis in the Emergency Department, Leicester 2008

Hebbes CP. Pharmacological characterisation of a novel series of peptides acting at opioid receptors. Anaesthetic Research Society, London, 2008 (Poster presentation)

MacDougall E, Hebbes CP. Kutty S, Manuel C, Al-Jayyoussi R. Leicester Northamptonshire and Rutland Academic showcase, Leicester, 2007 - Designing a teaching program to benefit medical students and junior doctors. (Poster presentation)

Hebbes, CP. Identification and characterisation of small molecule peptoid opioid receptor ligands. Health Foundation Intercalated BSc seminars, London, 2004 (Oral Presentation)

Hebbes, CP. Receptor binding studies on novel ligands for the delta and mu opioid receptors. International Student Congress of the Medical Sciences, Gronigen, Holland, 2004 (Poster publication with abstract)

Hebbes, CP. No pain, no gain? Examining new analgesics. St Cyres Comprehensive School, Biomedical Sciences Day, Cardiff, 2004 (Oral presentation)

Continuing Professional Development

Courses and training

Meetings attended

Additional skills and experience

Information technology and information management is a key interest for me; an enabler for my projects in technology enhanced learning, simulation, and my research. I completed Computer Sciences training to A-Level, and use these skills in desktop publishing (Microsoft Office, Inkscape, Irfandraw, GIMP), programming (HTML, BASIC, Pascal, CSS), statistics (SPSS, GraphPad Prism), image and video manipulation (ImageJ, FIJI, Shotcut). I have undertaken a number of projects requiring me to use additional skills, such as the use of Microsoft SharePoint, Stream, PHP, PowerShell and R.

Although complementary to my career aspirations, these are core, key skills and will become increasingly important in order to access and critically appraise online sources, and to manage electronic patient record systems. Information literacy, search optimisation, and latterly the use of “big data” and statistical analyses will become increasingly key to personalised medicine.

These projects have given me a track record of delivering work to a deadline and offering support and advice to others.

Experience

Personal interests

Medicine is a major part of my life; however my other passions are the outdoors, cooking and exercise. A keen runner and mountain biker throughout my medical training I have completed several half-marathons, and completed the Virgin Money London Marathon in 2019, raising money for the Stroke Association.

I’m often found in the Peak district, Cannock chase, or around Leicestershire with friends, my partner and our dog, Oscar, whom we rescued and trained 5 years ago.

Living in Aylestone, I am an active member of the Friends of Aylestone Hall gardens, a local group established to maintain the local environment and fund-raise for local charities through events within the gardens and engagement with the local ward committee.

My last guilty pleasure is food – often to be found in the kitchen baking, frequently for colleagues, and friends (and several times over the years for the [in]famous cake Friday).

A (very) occasional guitarist, and (even less frequently) pianist.