47 - Matt Morgan - Mixing science, history, emotion and humanity in telling Critical stories

Sep 23, 2019

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Have you visited any of your past patients or their families in their homes?

Would this be difficult?

What might you learn?

Medicine is mostly a series of stories of people's lives. This is a privilege we often overlook. In Intensive Care we usually only have a glimpse into each life, an almost unrecognisable flash of physical suffering, medical procedure, bedside vigil and hopefully recovery, but sadly we often miss the end of the story. What happened to that person? Did they recover? Did they regain their previous life? What do they remember?

Dr Matt Morgan, a Welsh Intensivist, didn't enjoy missing the end of these stories, and he wasn't sure that laypeople really understood what we do in the ICU. So he took it upon himself to visit some of the patients or their families who he had helped care for in the Intensive Care Unit. And what he learned helped him write his recently published book "Critical - science and stories from the brink of life".

Matt is a Consultant in Intensive Care Medicine at the University Hospital of Wales, and an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at Cardiff University in the UK. After completing medical school in Cardiff, where he still lives and works, Matt studied ethics at Bristol University, served as a junior doctor in the RAF, and subsequently chose the path of intensive care medicine, training in the UK and Australia, and completing a PhD. Matt is passionate about public engagement and has contributed to multiple scientific articles.

The book "Critical" takes readers on a tour around the intensive care unit, meeting some of his most interesting and memorable cases. These stories include a pregnant woman who survived for weeks without a heart beat, the son of a police officer who was critically injured in a drug lab explosion, a judge who returns to the court room where he needed CPR, and an 18-year-old student who sadly died from sepsis after a trip to Africa. Throughout the book, Matt also highlights public health messages like the importance of bystander CPR, the harms of alcohol, the benefits of organ donation and how medicine is currently battling what should be done with what can be done.

In this podcast conversation you'll hear Matt speak about his new book, and also about:

How he has tried to mix science, history, emotions and humans together in his writing
How hard it was to visit some of the patients and their families he wrote about in his book
The value of doing this "deep follow up"
The story of Vivi, who is understood to be the world's first ever Intensive Care patient
How we can increase our use of narrative medicine including in medical note writing
The changes he's made to the process of his ward round
Some of his thoughts on burnout and how he deals with the demands of work
The importance he places on sleep
His views on mindfulness
What he says and does in a family meeting
The question he thinks is crucial in a family meeting
How he involves trainees in these meetings
Some advice for difficult conversations
The value of reading outside of intensive care and outside of medicine
His obsession with animal physiology
His thoughts on changes we need to make in intensive care

Matt is an excellent writer with a gift for describing disease and concepts very simply. He speaks articulately too. Please enjoy listening to Matt Morgan.

Andrew Davies

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About the Mastering Intensive Care podcast: The podcast is aimed to inspire and empower you to bring your best self to the intensive care unit, through conversations with thought-provoking guests. I hope you'll glean insights to help you improve as a healthcare professional and as a human being so you can make a truly valuable contribution to your patient's lives.

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Links to people, organisations and other resources mentioned:

Dr Matt Morgan website

Matt Morgan on twitter

Book "Critical" (by Matt Morgan)

Blog piece "The ward round is broken" (by Matt Morgan)

Blog piece "Burnout in healthcare workers - are we surprised" (by Peter Brindley and Matt Morgan)

Other BMJ blog pieces by Matt Morgan

Other blogs by Matt Morgan

If this then that (IFTTT)

Book "Why we Sleep" (by Matt Walker)

Mastering Intensive Care podcast - Episode 40 with Ed Litton