WELCOME

Assistant editors

Belinda L. Atkinson BSc(Hons); RGN; RSCN; DipN(Lond)

Belinda Atkinson is Clinical Services Manager in the intensive care units at Southampton Uni- versity Hospital.

She trained at St. Thomas’ Hospital, London, where she also undertook the intensive care nursing course; and at the Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street. Whilst in Lon- don she held various posts in adult and paedia- tric intensive care at St. Thomas’, Guy’s and the Harley Street Clinic. For three years she was course teacher to the ENB Course 100 at St. Thornah’.

Belintla moved to Southampton in 1983 as nursing officer/nurse specialist in intensive care, before raking up her present post with the advent of general management in 1986.

Between 1988 and 1991 she was President of the British Association of Critical Care Nurses, having been involved with this group since its formation in early 1980s. She now holds life member ship; and represents the Association in an honorary capacity as International Liaison Officer. She represents the UK as a member of the liaison group for non-physician societies of the World Federation of Intensive and Critical Care Medicine.

Scholarships and awards have included a Hos- pital Savings Association Scholarship to study fot the Diploma in Nursing; a Florence Nightingale Scholarship in 1985 to study paedia- tric intensive care in Europe; and, in 1990, Belinda received an award from the European Society of Paediatric Intensive Care for a paper concernmg the psychosocial care of the child in an intensive care unit, submitted to the Euro- pean Congress in Amsterdam.

Belinda is a member of the Foundation for Research in Intensive Care in Europe and was a member of the European working group which

produced the guidelines for the ‘Management of Intensive Care’, published in 1990, in which she co-authored the chapter concerned with staffing and training. She has had several articles published; and has served on the editorial advi- sory boards of various journals. She has served on the board for Intensive Care Nursing since 1989. She has presented papers at many national and international events on a varietv of critical care related topics.

She is currently studying for an MSc in Health Studies at the University of Southampton, and hopes to continue her studies to PhD level. Her particular interests lie in the organisation and management of critical care; in the cost-effec- tiveness and use of’ critical care facilities, and in the ethical issues surrounding critical care. She views critical care as a continually developing entity, with a need for nurses to become more openly accountable for their practice, and more aware of the global issues involved in maintain- ing critical care services.

David R. Thompson BSc, PhD, RGN, RMN, ONC

David Thompson is Clinical Nurse Specialist in the coronary care unit at Leicestel- (ieneral Hospital.

After completing courses in orthopaedic, gen- eral, and psychiatric nursing he gained experi- ence as a staff nurse in coronary care and medical nursing in the United Kingdom and in Canada. David moved to Leicester in 1980 where he was charge nurse and subsequently nurse manager. Apart from spending 10 years working in coronary care nursing he has held posts as senior nurse (research) for North Derbyshire Health Authority and as lecturer in nursing at the University of Liverpool. He

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returned to Leicester in 1989 at his present post. He is also a lecturer at Loughborough University of Technology and visiting research fellow at the Nuffield Institute of the University of Leeds.

David has published widely in the nursing, cardiology, psychology, and rehabilitation litera- ture. He has been an associate editor of fntensiur Care Nursing since it was founded in 1985. He is also an assistant editor of the forthcoming lournal of Clinical Nursing and serves on the editorial board of Nursing.

The award of a Department of Health Nurs- ing Research Studentship enabled him to com- plete, in less than three years and on a part-time basis, a PhD. Part of this work appears in a monograph, in the Royal College of Nursing

Research Series, entitled ‘Counselling the Coronary Patient and Partner’ which was published in 1990. He is also the author or co-author of four other books including ‘Cardiac Nursing’, published in 1982, ‘Comprehensive Coronarv Care’, published in 1989, and the forthcoming ‘Nursing the Acute Coronary Patient’.

David is actively involved in clinical nursing research. His main areas of interest currently are the analysis of circadian variations in acute ischaemic chest pain; the monitoring of emotional reactions in the coronary patient and partner; and the evaluation of interventions designed to promote recovery and well-being in the coronary patient and partner.