XLIV National Congress of the Sociedad Española de Enfermería Intensiva y Unidades Coronarias

493 nurses and 24 physiotherapists specialising in critical care gathered together in Granada. This was a joint congress of the LIII National Congress of the Sociedad Española de Medicina Intensiva y Unidades Coronarias (SEMICYUC) and the 33rd National Congress of the Sociedad Española de Cuidados Intensivos Pediátricos (SECIP).

It gives us enormous satisfaction that the sharing of a congress with other professionals results in more inter-professional sessions and in new joint future projects. In this congress, the second in which a whole day was spent with physiotherapists, we consolidated joint sessions as an update in respiratory and multi-disciplinary care. We also repeated the non-invasive mechanical ventilation workshop with paediatric nurses, who are unquestionably benchmark to this therapy.

This edition of the congress included 32 speakers, 24 moderators and 19 workshop managers. Joint sessions between the three groups covered such contemporary issues as humanisation, with participation from patients and family members, leaderships and inter-professional communication. During the latter session a paediatric critical care practitioner mentioned Hildegard Peplau, whose model of care forms part of the nursing degree study programme. Finally, when the literature was reviewed, humanisation and communication emerged as the fundamental pillars of our profession, as indeed they always have.

Monday's “up to date” session covered infections, and the new Zero project, Urinary Infection Zero, whose training model is available on the SEEIUC web, together with the role of the nurse in our Resistencia Zero project. In another session there was an in-depth discussion of quality indicators, which had been updated from last year, and which had remained pending. Another session by the physiotherapists covered specific indicators in mobility. In Tuesday's session, publications of systematic reviews were revised by the nurses and there was a discussion about the controversial issue of curing wounds with sugar.

With regard to the pros and cons discussions, “Nurse Doctors and now what?” the second edition started by adding the figure of the nurse as manager and union leader. The other discussion debated over better work shifts, 8 hours versus 12. Neither of the two sessions reached any final conclusions, as was anticipated, but controversy and proposals for change to be communicated to the managers, were generated.

11 workshops were programmed, 5 financed by the sector. Several of them were classic cases, such as that of therapeutic hypothermia by Becton Dickinson-Bard, and renal therapies by Baxter. Other were first edition, such as that on beds and devices for mobility, jointly financed by Linet and Arjo, and Vesismin, an exhibition on the ICU without water. We also repeated the training session on sedoanalgesia thanks to Orion Pharma, this time with nurse and physician teachers who were both from the sedation and analgesia work groups of SEEIUC and SEMICYUC.

The other 6 workshops were financed by the association, as a decided attempt to foster training and updating of technical and non-technical skills during the congress. Workshops based on simulation methodology, non-invasive mechanical ventilation with standardised patient, task trainer with the Helmet case and interactive dummy for the paediatric patient. There was also a high fidelity simulation workshop which trained in intra-hospital transfer this time, taking the dummy to have a scan with the ICU team and verifying the need for the use of a checklist before, during and after the transfer.

A second edition of the tracheostomy workshop also took place, as an inter-professional session between the nurse, physiotherapist and speech therapist. We would like this to be the start of a new work group in the association, as a line of communication with the critically ill patient is needed (dysphagia, phonation vents and communication systems). The promoters of the initiative were encouraged to give it shape and were naturally fully supported by management board and scientific committee of SEEIUC.

We repeated the bioethical workshop with nurse and physician teachers from the bioethical work groups of SEEIUC and SEMICYUC. What remains to be seen, similarly to the sedoanalgesia session, is for doctors to be able to attend these inter-professional workshops and for them to be consolidated as joint workshops between both communities. We will attempt to make this a reality for the next congress.

Finally, there was a new workshop on ultra-sound guided puncture, where demand clearly outweighed offer, but which we were unable to deal with due to the limited number of teachers assigned. We were able to organise this thanks to SECIP and hope to continue to do so in future years, with a larger number of sessions in response to the interest shown by the attendees. Healthcare education in the ICU through brief motivational intervention was also a new workshop presided over by a nurse teacher and two psychologist nurses. Psychologist nurses, physiotherapists and speech therapists all need to play a greater role in the ICU.

To conclude, as an overview of the programme, we are proud to state that the results from two national multicentre research projects which had been promoted by the association were presented. The MOviPre (early mobility), in which 86 ICUs participated with 81 nurses, 71 collaborative research physiotherapists and 557 associated researchers from almost all the autonomous communities of Spain and the ASCyD project (Analgesia, Sedation, Contentions and Delirium) which covered a cross-sectional area of 158 ICU in Spain, with assessment from 1,574 patients. The presented results of the ASCyD project revealed the presence of pain in 43% of assessed patients, agitation in 10%, profound sedation in 21%, contentions in 21% and delirium in 13%.

The MOviPre study also generated the study which evaluated the presence of the physiotherapists in 96 ICUs in Spain, including information on his or her training and employment characteristics. We hope these results will soon be published and thereby contribute reliable data to convince the ICU managers of the need for physiotherapists to continue advancing mobility, among other care needs.

Another source of great satisfaction was the quality and number of accepted abstracts. 73 oral communications were presented along with 263 posters, 4 of which were video posters and one of which will be selected by the simulation group to be uploaded onto the SEEIUC website, in keeping with the published bases.

The closing ceremony took place with the awarding of prizes, as it does each year but nobody collected the post graduate prize. We would encourage all master's degree students to present their theses to the congress. Clinical cases and bibliographic reviews are accepted as the bases of this prize.

Finally, we would like to congratulate the finalists of the first edition of the “SEEIUC Investiga” award. We hope this will serve as an incentive to continue striving within the demanding world of research.