What's new in acute respiratory failure?

Ema Swingwood is a Consultant Physiotherapist in Critical Care at University Hospitals Bristol and Weston NHS Foundation Trust. Her area of clinical expertise and interest is ventilation, weaning and complex airway clearance. She has lectured at International conferences over a number of years around these topics, alongside postgraduate lecturing at University College London.  Her PhD work focused on the use of Mechanical Insufflation-Exsufflation in the intubated population which was funded through the NIHR Clinical Academic Research Fellowship pathway. Post-doctoral work continues to examine the role of airway clearance interventions in the ICU population. She is a current Senior Clinical Practitioner Research Award holder (2025-7). Most recently she was a co-applicant on a successful NIHR Health and Care Professions Internship Programme for Southwest Central and lead applicant NIHR Undergraduate Internship Placement award.  She sits on the Intensive Care Society (ICS) Physiotherapy Professional Advisory Group (Deputy Chair) and Education Committee. Alongside these roles, Ema is the current Programme Director for the ICS annual congress (SOA) and Deputy Chair for Professional Affairs. She has been part of the multi-professional authorship for BTS/ICS documents related to Respiratory Support Units, Weaning Centres and Complex Home Ventilation. 

Ben Messer is a Consultant in Critical Care Medicine and Long-term Ventilation in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and the clinical lead of the North East Assisted Ventilation Service. His main critical care interest is acute non-invasive respiratory support. Within home ventilation, his interests are tracheostomy ventilation, upper airway dysfunction and secretion management in MND, and the respiratory and perioperative care of neuromuscular patients. He was the chair of the multi-professional group which produced the model of care document for complex home mechanical ventilation services published by the British Thoracic Society in 2024.

Danny McAuley is a Consultant and Professor in Intensive Care Medicine at the Regional Intensive Care Unit at the Royal Victoria Hospital and Queen’s University of Belfast. He undertook his training in Belfast, Birmingham, London and San Francisco. He is NIHR Scientific Director for research programmes. He has several research interests including Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome, recovery following critical illness and clinical trials.

Bronwen Connolly is a Professor of Critical Care at Queen’s University Belfast, where she is Deputy Director of the Wellcome-Wolfson Institute for Experimental Medicine, and Honorary Senior Fellow at The University of Melbourne, with over 25 years’ experience as a physiotherapist. Her research interests focus on acute respiratory and rehabilitation interventions in critical illness, the recovery, long-term outcome, and survivorship of post critical illness patients, and clinical trial methods. Bronwen is currently Co-Chief Investigator of the MARCH trial (NIHR HTA Programme), investigating the effectiveness of mucoactive drugs in acute respiratory failure, as well as co-Investigator on several other nationally funded trials around ventilation management and recovery. Within the critical care community, Bronwen’s roles include Intensive Care Society Director of Research and Chair of the UK Critical Care Research Group.