Anyone Got a Map? Life after PICU with Joseph Manning WFPICCS collaboration

The second in our collaboration with WFPICCS (the World Federation of Pediatric Intensive and Critical Care Societies) showcasing the talks to look forward to at WFPICCS 2026 in Melbourne, September 27–30. Returning guest Professor Joseph Manning MBE (University of Leicester and Nottingham Children’s Hospital) is a clinical academic nurse leader, architect of much of what we know about post-intensive care syndrome in children, and lead of the OCEANIC study — the largest UK cohort following children and families through the first year after critical illness. He’ll be giving the plenary “Anybody Got a Map? Trajectories of Survival Following Pediatric Critical Illness.”

We’ve become remarkably good at helping children survive critical illness — but survival raises a new set of questions. Over half the children in OCEANIC had not regained their baseline quality of life at 12 months, and an apparently simple admission can still mean very complex survivorship. Joseph offers wonderful insights on whether PICS-p is ready for prime time, how to prepare and safety-net families without overwhelming them, why families are the true continuity of care, nurse navigators and the fragmented transition home, why he’d rather not see an ICD code for PICS-p, and how we build a global (not just high-resource) evidence base. Plus: when will patients and families be speaking from the World Congress stage, not just sitting in the audience? And yes, we asked — there may be a map…

Hosted by Dr. Karen Choong (McMaster Children’s Hospital, Canada), Dr. Greg Kelly (Sydney Children’s Hospital Westmead, Australia) and Dr. Peta Alexander (Boston Children’s Hospital, USA).