We are delighted to feature ICU Management's Editor-in-Chief, Professor Jean-Louis Vincent, in Zoom On. Dr. Vincent is Professor of Intensive Care at the University of Brussels, and intensive care physician in the Department of Intensive Care at the Erasme University Hospital in Brussels. We put our seven questions to him: 

1.    What are your key areas of interest and research?
They are multiple, as I am interested in many (virtually all) aspects of intensive care medicine. But if I had to cite some: sepsis, haemodynamic monitoring, respiratory failure, trauma, circulatory shock, ethical aspects…

2.    What are the major challenges in your field?
To conduct prospective, randomised, controlled clinical trials. With our very heterogeneous populations and individual preferences about prolonged life-support, virtually all our trials targeting mortality have been negative in our field.  

3.    What is your top management tip?
Make everybody happy… and make sure they can take their responsibilities without excessive reliance on your opinion. Buddha said “Do not believe in what I said, but think about it…” I think it is a great principle.

4.    What would you single out as a career highlight?
The celebration I received when I stepped down as Head of the Department – it is the day where people can express what they really think about you.

5.    If you had not chosen this career path you would have become a…?
An intensivist – there is no reasonable alternative: our health is our most precious good and helping people whose health is damaged or at stake is the highest privilege on earth.

6.    What are your personal interests outside of work?
To enjoy life – to celebrate !

7.    Your favourite quote?
“Whenever people agree with me, I feel I must be wrong” (Oscar Wilde)

Dr. Vincent, MD, PhD,  gained his medical degree from the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium with magna cum laude, with a specialty in Internal Medicine and Intensive Care Medicine. His postgraduate training included two years of fellowship in critical care medicine at the University of Southern California with Prof. Max Harry Weil. He joined Erasme Hospital's Intensive Care Department in 1979, taking over as Head of Department from the service's founder, Professor Robert Kahn. 

Dr. Vincent has published more than 800 original articles, some 300 book chapters and review articles, 850 original abstracts, and has edited 86 books. He is co-editor of the Textbook of Critical Care (Elsevier Saunders, 5th Edition) and the “Encyclopedia of Intensive Care Medicine” (Springer).

Dr. Vincent has been the Editor-in-Chief of ICU Management since its inception. In addition he is the editor-in-chief of "Critical Care" and "Current Opinion in Critical Care". He sits on the Editorial Boards of about 30 journals including "Critical Care Medicine" (senior editor), American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine (AJRCCM), "PLoS Medicine", "Lancet Infectious Diseases", "Intensive Care Medicine", "Shock", and "Journal of Critical Care".

Dr. Vincent is currently President of the World Federation of Societies of Intensive and Critical Care Medicine (WFSICCM). He is a Past-President of the Belgian Society of Intensive Care Medicine (SIZ), the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine (ESICM), the European Shock Society (ESS), and the International Sepsis Forum (ISF).

For 34 years he has organised an International Symposium on Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine which is held every March in Brussels.

He has received the Distinguished Investigator Award of the Society of Critical Care Medicine, the College Medalist Award of the American College of Chest Physicians, was the Recipient of the "Society Medal”(lifetime award) of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine and has received the prestigious Belgian scientific award of the FRS-FNRS (Prix Scientifique Joseph Maisin-Sciences biomédicales cliniques.

ISICEM 2015 I-I-I Interview with Prof. Jean-Louis Vincent on 35 Years of ISICEM


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ICU, editorial board, Zoom On We are delighted to feature ICU Management's Editor-in-Chief, Professor Jean-Louis Vincent, in Zoom On. Dr. Vincent is Professor of Intensive Care at the U...