Isabel Diez Martin

Senior Recovery Nurse

Biography: With 15 years of experience at Chelsea & Westminster Hospital Trust, I specialize in Adult, Burns, and Paediatric Recovery, where I am committed to ensuring high-quality patient care. My career has spanned clinical nursing, leadership, and quality improvement, and I am dedicated to leading multidisciplinary teams, mentoring staff, and driving continuous improvements to enhance patient outcomes and operational efficiency.

Recently, I have been leading a Quality Improvement project titled “Enhancing Paediatric Care of Post-Op Patients Experiencing Emergence Delirium (ED).” This initiative has allowed my team to become the first in the UK to document Paediatric ED as a vital sign using the CAP-D screening tool. Additionally, I am collaborating with international experts to develop guidelines for managing Paediatric ED, addressing a critical gap due to the absence of NICE guidelines.

Horizon Fellowship project summary: Paediatric Emergence Delirium (ED) affects 10% to 30% of all children in the Post Anaesthesia Care Unit (PACU), according to the most common consensus in the literature, but it is often undocumented in Recovery units worldwide. Some of these children are at risk of harming themselves, their carers, and the PACU staff. A top priority of my project is to document ED as a vital sign and integrate the CAP-D tool into our Cerner system. This integration will enable medical staff to identify patients with a history of ED and to extract data to support ongoing research efforts.

Estimated number of patients / staff impacted by the project: This project will impact all paediatric post-operative patients at our hospital.

Goal(s) for time on the Horizon Fellowship programme: During my time in the Horizon Fellowship, I aim to develop a deeper understanding of how to navigate hospital integration systems and explore research and innovation opportunities to improve paediatric post-op care.