Joel Dunning is a Specialist Registrar in Cardiothoracic Surgery in James Cook University Hospital in Middlesbrough. When he was a Houseman in Blackpool in 2002 he attended several cardiac arrests in patients post-cardiac surgery, but felt very much that he did not know his role in the arrest. Talking to the nursing and junior medical staff he realised that nobody knew what to do and everybody tended to wait until a consultant arrived. Together with Adrian Levine he therefore derived the Cardiothoracic Advanced Life Support course protocols and with Sharil Arrifin and John Jerstice created the lectures and practicals to turn this into a comprehensive course for the care of all critically ill patients post cardiac surgery.
In addition to the CALS course, Joel Dunning is the editor of Best Evidence Topics in Interactive Journal of Cardiothoracic Surgery (www.icvts.org), the European Association of Cardiothoracic Surgery's own journal. This section allows all clinicians from across Europe write and publish evidence based answers to clinical questions taken from their daily practice. Joel Dunning is also a member of the European Association of Cardiothoracic Surgeons Audit & Guidelines committee, which publishes annual clinical guidelines, most recently a guideline on the treatment and management of atrial fibrillation after Cardiac Surgery.
(http://ejcts.ctsnetjournals.org/cgi/content/full/30/6/852)
Joel Dunning is also a member of the Guideline Development Group of the NICE guidelines committee for the management of Head Injuries in England and Wales, and the CHALICE rule that he derived as his PhD thesis has recently been recommended for national implementation for all children who attend the emergency department with a head injury.
Joel Dunning lives in Crosby Garrett in the Lake District and when not at work he may be found at home clearing up after Alice (aged 3) and Ed (aged 2) together with his wife Sarah.
You can view more information on Joel at www.ctsnet.org/home/joeldunning

 

I am a consultant cardiac surgeon at the University Hospital of North Staffordshire. I qualified in medicine in 1987 and trained in cardiac, thoracic and cardio-pulmonary transplant surgery, throughout the UK during the 1990's. I have worked in cardiac and general ITU's since 1989. I became a consultant in 2000. My interests are in cardiac surgery for heart failure and post-operative care. I have a busy clinical and managerial workload but still find time to cheer my son on playing rugby on wet, cold Sunday mornings!
During my training and since becoming a consultant I noted that although everybody (from the most basic healthcare to the most senior consultant) seemed to know what to do at a cardiac arrest on a general ward. This had been taught, re-iterated and digested from numerous BLS and ALS courses. The situation in cardiac surgery was exactly the opposite, most cardiac arrests that I witnessed initially resembled chaos and continued to do so until an experienced trainee surgeon or consultant made an appearance. The experienced trainee (the registrar and senior registrar of the 1990's) no longer exists. Consultants are not instantly available on ITU's 24/7. A number of us (surgeons, anaesthetists, senior nurses, surgical juniors) got together to try to design protocols by which the staff immediately available on a cardiac ITU could adequately resuscitate a patient after a cardiac procedure.
The result of this is the CALS course.