About iFAD
(c) The 2017 IFA Executive Committee, from left to right:
TOP: co-founders Dr Niels Van Regenmortel (Vice-president), Prof Dr Manu Malbrain (President)
BOTTOM: Prof Dr Paul Elbers (Amsterdam, The Netherlands), Prof Dr Xavier Monnet (Paris, France), Dr Adrian Wong (London, UK)
The iFAD started as local initiative form the pharmaceutical working group on fluids from the Ziekenhuis Netwerk Antwerpen (www.zna.be). Today iFAD is integrated within the not-for-profit charitable organization iMERiT, International Medical Education and Research Initiative, under Belgian law (Belgian National Tax Number: 0559836092, for more information see UIA – Union of International Associations https://www.uia.org/s/or/en/1122279270), and as such the iFAD Organising Committee strongly recognizes and values a constructive partnership with the industry via unrestricted educational grants.
The initial IFAD founders are Prof Dr Manu Malbrain, internist-intensivist and former ICU director at the ZNA Stuivenberg hospital (2002-2017) and University Hospital Brussels and VUB (2017-2020) (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) and Dr Niels Van Regenmortel, internist-intensivist, ICU staff member at the ZNA Stuivenberg hospital (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.). Founded in 2011 during the 1st International Fluid Academy Day (iFAD) meeting, the goals of the IFA are to foster education and to promote research on fluid management and monitoring in critically ill and other patients, thereby improving the survival of patients by bringing together physicians, nurses, pharmacists, and others from a variety of clinical disciplines. This can be achieved by collaborative research projects, surveys, guideline development, joint data registration, and international exchange of health care workers and researchers. We invite the reader to follow @Fluid_Academy and to check this website for more information on fluid management and hemodynamic monitoring (under FOAM resources). The IFA helps hospitals and organizations to implement fluid stewardship as a quality improvement programme (UZ Brussels, RZ Tienen, AZ Jan Palfijn Ghent).
The statutes can be found here
The revision of the Executive committee can be found here
The IFA website (http://www.fluidacademy.org) is now an official SMACC affiliated site (Social Media and Critical Care) and its content is based on the philosophy of FOAM (Free Open Access Medical education – #FOAMed). The site recently received the HONcode quality label for medical education.
The acquired knowledge and results of research will be published in Medical Fluids, the international journal on medical fluid management (published in Anaesthesiology Intensive Therapy), and shared with his peer group each year during the meeting. About 370 participants attended the 1st iFAD on November 19th in 2011 (at Elzenveld Congress Centre in Antwerp, Belgium). 425 participants attended the second edition, held on November 17th in 2012 (at the Radisson Blue Congress and Convention Centre, Antwerp, Belgium). Because this success the 3rd iFAD held in 2013, was a 2-day event (Nov 29-30) gathering 500 delegates from all over the world at the Hilton Hotel in Antwerp. The 4th and 5th editions were a 3-day event held again at the Hilton Hotel in Antwerp, Belgium from Nov 27th till 29th in 2014 and Nov 26th – 28th in 2015 respectively. The last editions (before COVID) of the International Fluid Academy Days were a huge success with on average 500 delegates: around 300 critical care specialists, 110 critical care nurses, 50 keynote speakers together with 50 industry representatives from all over the globe. After 5 successful editions the organising committee decided to make it a bi-annual event in Belgium with pop-up meetings (IFADmini) abroad in between: 2017 (Antwerp), 2018 (Amsterdam), 2019 (Dubai, Campinas, Valencia, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Mexico city), 2020 (virtual eIFAD), 2021 (hybrid in Brussels), 2022 (Dubai, Krakau).
Looking forward
2020 has been a challenging year for all. The COVID19 pandemic has provoked profound and probably long-lasting changes to healthcare systems but also the delivery of educational material to colleagues. Face-to-face conferences have had to be rescheduled and replaced with online meetings, given the continually evolving travel restrictions. The IFAD conference has not been spared these tribulations.
With the growing awareness of diversity and equity in the workplace, it is essential to create inclusive environments. Recent events on social media have once again brought the issue of gender and racial diversity to the fore. Like other progressive organizations, IFA is committed to supporting diversity and inclusion, specifically focusing on increasing participation of underrepresented groups. IFA has always been proud of the innovation, interaction and provision of opportunities to our next generations of colleagues. We are not perfect, and mistakes have been made. We have reflected upon these issues and are facing them head-on with a renewed vigour.
As we are well aware, the pandemic crisis we are currently living in requires strong leadership at all levels, focusing on human factors or the so-called 'non-technical skills' in addition to the clinical nuance.
Our commitment
We are committed to the following:
- That all future IFA events, starting with the upcoming virtual eIFAD at the end of November, will not have all-white-male panels and will be representative/reflective of the multidisciplinary community in which we belong.
- We are stronger together. We will officially launch #********** as an umbrella term for all future endeavours worldwide to strive for excellence in diversity and a focus on human factors.
- The primary goals of the IFA will remain the same with a focus on “International” and “Academy”
International
- of or relating to two or more nations or their citizens
At the moment, the IFA is mostly a European-centric organisation. Over the last year, links have been built with colleagues in Latin America and the Middle East. In 2020, planned meetings with colleagues in Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia had to be cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It remains unclear when these face-to-face meetings will resume.
With the move to a more online/digital format, this is an opportunity to be truly international with representation of colleagues from these countries being provided a platform to engage. The lack of representation from such LMIC was a major criticism of the Surviving Sepsis Campaign. I propose that each country be provided a standard template of questions to be answered relating to fluid practice in their respective countries. These could form the basis for future collaborative work or quality improvement projects.
Relevant questions can include:
- What is the most common fluid used in the ED/OR/ICU?
- Are there institutional or national guidelines relating to fluid management?
- Are colloids available in the country?
- What are the research priorities with regards to fluids?
Academy
- an association or institution for the advancement of art, literature, or science
- a group of authorities and leaders in a field of scholarship, art, etc., who are often permitted to dictate standards, prescribe methods, and criticize new ideas.
The propose is to review the various resources (blogs, videos, lectures) currently available on fluidacademy.org into a true “Academy” with the intent of turning it into THE main repository of knowledge for all fluid-related matters. This would be made available to members of the Fluid Academy.
Such a resource would form part of a learning pathway for colleagues with regards to fluid management. The library will support learning and discussions at face-to-face or online meetings which would mostly be focussed on discussion and debate. Ultimately, this could also be further consolidated with “Fellowships” or exchange programmes.
Whilst particularly focussed on the current IFA day, there is no reason why this model of “Academy” digital resources, webinars/face-to-face meetings, fellowships etc could not be replicated in other areas such as ECMO (BEACH) or ultrasound (CACU).
A hashtag is there to support specific action plans. We need to reflect and decide on what exactly we are going to do. Something SMART. eg in 2 years time, the scientific committee of the IFA conference will be 50% female.
This site complies with the HONcode standard for trustworthy health information:
verify here.
