Paul Ritson Grad Dip Phys MCSP & Peter Beirne Grad Dip Phys MCSP

Biography:

Paul Ritson graduated from Royal Liverpool Hospital College School of Physiotherapy in 1988. He has worked at the Royal Liverpool Children’s NHS Trust (Alder Hey) since 1990, specialising in the respiratory speciality of Paediatric Intensive Care since 1993 having completed the Brompton Hospital Validated Respiratory Course. Since 2000, Paul has worked as a Clinical Specialist Physiotherapist on the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit at Alder Hey.  This extensive unit caters for all specialities including cardiac surgery and his role also includes teaching to all of all grades of staff, from Doctors to Health Care Assistants.  He is also the Resuscitation Trainer for the Physiotherapy, Occupational Therapy, Speech Therapy and Orthotic Depts. For the last 10 years Paul has co-organised and lectured on Paediatric Respiratory Care on the Mersey Region On Call Course for newly qualified Physiotherapists.  He has also delivered the Paediatric respiratory module at the University of Liverpool for the past 7 years and at the University of Salford in Manchester for the last 5 years. In October 2003, he was co-organiser of the APCP Introduction to Paediatrics course – an annual course lasting 1 week, validated by the APCP.  He has been an invited speaker at national conferences, including ACPRC Conference, Advanced ITU courses at University College and Great Ormond Street Hospital, London. At present, he is part of a group of Physiotherapists starting a Paediatric Intensive Care Physiotherapist Interest Group, which will be affiliated to the APCP. In March 2004, an ‘On Call Physiotherapist Survival Guide’ was published, to which Paul wrote one chapter and co authored a second.

Peter Beirne graduated from Royal Liverpool Hospital College School of Physiotherapy in 1991.After working initially at Broadgreen Hospital, Liverpool he started work at the North Wales Sport Injury Clinic on a part time basis, and also at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, Liverpool.  In 1996 he took a full time position at Alder Hey. At this time he began to develop the Paediatric Orthopaedic Service within the Trust and also became involved with the English and Welsh Athletics Teams. Following promotion to Superintendent at Alder Hey in 1996, he continued to develop the inpatient and outpatient Orthopaedic service and worked closely in setting up the Paediatric Ilizarov service.  During this time he was also heavily involved in the Haemophilia service and setting up National guidelines into the treatment of paediatric conditions.

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