Professor Gary H. Mills

I was appointed as an NHS Consultant in Anaesthesia and Intensive Care in 1997 as a hepatobiliary anaesthetist and intensivist, having trained in Sheffield and London and as an honorary professor at the University of Sheffield in 2012. 

Clinical developments

During Ebola (we were one of 3 referral centres after Royal Free London), and then during Covid, I was our local High Consequence Infectious Disease (HCID) ICU lead. I was involved in the creation of our HCID rooms on ICU and developed our critical care covid expansion plan. As an elected FICM Board member I promoted the spread of evidence-based treatment and new safety issues by creating an early covid safety update on the FICM website called Very Rapid Updates on Safety “VIRUS.”, eventually supplanted by the combined RCA, ICS and FICM covid update. I represented FICM and intensive care on the weekly Prof Chris Whitty CMO Covid briefing to Royal College representatives during the first pandemic and then led the ICM input via his one-on-one discussions to develop his Technical Brief for future CMOs in pandemics (2022).

Safety

Following VIRUS I became the first FICM National Safety Lead (2018-22). I examined data from NHSE and formed links to HSIB and MHRA and created the quarterly FICM Critical Care Safety Bulletin, summarising and simplifying all safety incidents in an effort to reduce repetitions (2020-2023). Invited to become part of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine Safety Taskforce (2023-25), speaking on safety research at the ESICM Annual Congresses and presenting in online educational meetings.

Education

I set up our intensive care training committee and was initially program director and then Regional Advisor from 2002-11. I have been an examiner for the Diploma of Intensive Care Medicine (DICM) since 2004, which became the FFICM, and exam lead for the FFICM structured oral exam (2012-20. I am now part of the forthcoming FFICM Assessment of Clinical Reasoning (ACRE) exam development team, which we recently trialled on successful FFICM candidates. 

Health economics

I was the lead for the Cost-Block Program 2006-12 presented at the DoH in 2008. This looked at methods of costing and reimbursing critical care units. I contributed to demonstrating the cost-effectiveness of intensive care, as part of the ELDICUS trial. 

I was corresponding author for this work: Edbrooke DL, Minelli C, Mills GH, et al Implications of ICU triage decisions on patient mortality: a cost-effectiveness analysis. Crit Care. 2011;15(1):R56. doi: 10.1186/cc10029. Cited by 115.

Organ donation

I was an author of the NHS guidance Donation Actions Framework: Professional, ethical and legal framework for deceased organ donations actions, which included how research fits into this process.

Prehabilitation and rehabilitation

I am a co-applicant on Active Together. This £2 million project was funded via a grant from Yorkshire Cancer Research The aim was to develop a patient accessible prehabilitation and rehabilitation service for cancer patients undergoing treatment across South Yorkshire that was predominantly based outside hospitals in community centres . I chaired the Active Together Clinical Advisory Committee from 2021 to 2024. 

This has been highly successful, with over 2000 patients entering the program to date.

ICU follow-up

I set up our ICU follow-up clinic in 2021, developed as a multidisciplinary clinic with input from ICM, physiotherapy, nursing and psychology. This now includes a PPIE.