About Us

Nurses are at their patient's bedside and already manage complex devices, assessments, and interventions. For example, ventilation, renal replacement, and complex haemodynamic support. 

Physiotherapists routinely carry out advanced airway clearance procedures and are often the first to mobilise a recovering patient. This scan can serve as a pre and post intervention assessment.

ACCPs, nurses, and doctors carry out full body assessments of their patients and would use this scan to complement the A, B, C, D, E assessment and help inform clinical decision making.

The concept of a shared platform could enhance communication, improved relationships and understanding between staff professions.

Bedside ultrasound has proven to be as accurate as CT scans and chest x-rays and but what we don't know is if we train multiple staff groups in INSIGHT to make ultrasound more available to more patients, could it improve patient outcomes? Could it reduce the time spent on mechanical ventilation? Could it reduce the number of x-rays and transfers a patient needs? could it speed up treatment times by identifying or confirming concerns without the wait for out of department investigations? We have established equipoise and strong support among clinicians in our trust. As this is an unproven complex intervention with a requirement to develop the intervention (particularly around training; and demonstrate clinical effectiveness (patient outcomes/health economic), there is a clear need to carry out our research in stages to make sure it is conducted safely and with high quality data.. 

Adequate training and appropriate governance of staff training is at the core of ensuring patient safety. The existing evidence base widely reports that less one third of staff that start ultrasound training go on to complete it. Leaving a huge proportion of staff only partially trained but potentially still performing scans in the workplace. In addition, there is no mandate to maintain ultrasound skills once accredited through refresher sessions or ongoing supervision. We want to address these widespread issues in our research. By focusing on training, we hope to gain traction and momentum for the use of INSIGHT across our ICUs. This should lead to embedding INSIGHT as part of routine clinical workflow and contribute to changes in patient management

Ultrasound is immediate, meaning images can be seen and assessed in real time. It doesn't involve ionising radiation like CT scans or X-rays, and has been found to be as accurate as other types of scans which means it could reduce the need for them, minimising unnecessary radiation and reducing healthcare costs. Ultrasound is rapidly repeatable, cheap to use, and can be performed in situ at the patient's bedside with no requirement for patient transport. This could reduce waiting times for treatment, decrease the risks associated with transporting the patient, and allow for uninterrupted care.

The ICU environment demands continuous high quality care, assessment and treatment of the critically ill patient, regardless of whether it is day or night. Beside ultrasound has been established for rapid assessment in the emergency department (in the settings of cardiac arrest, shock, or internal bleeding, among others) and could help improve the safety and efficacy of invasive procedures (vascular access/chest drain insertion) whilst minimising the risk of infection.

Our patient and public group strongly support the clinical relevance of ultrasound that is nurse-led. They like the avoidance of ionising radiation and the immediate availability of the imaging. We designed our study outcomes to reflect what our patient and public group thought were the most important to them and their families. For example, a strong view was the experience of being transferred out of ICU for a CT or MRI scan was scary and the scanner itself is very noisy. If INSIGHT could reduce the need for this, it could improve patient experience and wellbeing. Our study therefore decided to measure the number of scans in a group of ICU patients receiving INSIGHT compared to a group of patients not receiving INSIGHT.