Ilana Webber, lecturer at the Children's Nursing Development Unit, travelled to sunny Johannesburg from 23 to 25 August to attend the 2024 Critical Care Society of South Africa (CCSSA) and the South African Society for Parenteral & Enteral Nutrition (SASPEN) congress, themed ‘Building Bridges’. 

Ilana presented a poster titled, ‘Strengthening the PICU nursing workforce in South Africa and the Region: Bridging the knowledge gap for pre-specialisation nurses’, co-authored by Minette Coetzee and Clare Davis. This was her first conference poster presentation which meant a lot of learning took place, from writing an abstract to poster design and finally presenting it. Not to forget all the logistics around flying with a very big poster.  

The conference program was full, but exciting, covering topics such as the new nursing scope of practice, sedation, delirium, care bundles, and the use of virtual reality in the critical care environment to name a few. An interesting discovery was the use of an avatar on cardiac monitors to visually display a child’s vital signs. It was developed by two anaesthetists, who both fly aeroplanes, to have a visual representation of vital signs as a quick overview of the child’s condition, similar to what they have in aviation. It was specifically designed for theatre but can be used in the intensive care setting as well. It would be interesting to see if many hospitals adopt this for their ICUs.