Post-Sepsis Syndrome: Recognition and Management

With over 45 years of experience in nursing, Cairn has had many different roles in the profession.  Cairn’s clinical background is primarily critical care, and she has maintained CCRN certification for almost her entire career.  Cairn has taught nursing academically for a number of years, in addition to roles in administration/professional development, vendor support education, entrepreneurship, and international nursing. Prior to joining McLaren Northern Michigan Hospital, Cairn served 3 years as a mentor to the Dean of the School of Nursing in Rwanda, Africa, with the goal of building health care capacity for the Dean, faculty, students, and nurses in the country.  This was through a partnership with the Clinton Health Access Initiative, Human Resources for Health and the University of Chicago, Illinois. In her current role as Sepsis Coordinator for McLaren Northern Michigan, and as chair of the McLaren system-wide Sepsis Excellence Team, Cairn focuses uniquely on sepsis issues and concerns.  This has allowed major advances in patient outcomes, through education, systems management, and careful monitoring and mid-stream adjustments of goals based on data.

Catherine Hough, MD, MSc, is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Medicine at Oregon Health and Science University. Her clinical and scientific expertise focuses on improving outcomes of patients with critical illness and injury. She is active in epidemiologic research, clinical trials, and implementation science, both during and after critical care.

Dr. Hough has served as Principal Investigator (PI) for the NIH NHLBI Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome Clinical Trials Network and the current NIH NHLBI Prevention and Early Treatment of Acute Lung Injury (PETAL) Network, with over 10 years of experience with these networks. She has had NIH funding since 2004 to conduct prospective observational and interventional studies in the ICU and post-ICU setting, including ongoing U01/R01 funded projects as multiple PI. She leads a mature and successful research program with a track record of high-quality and successful clinical trials conducted in the intensive care unit and post-ICU. She has been locally and nationally recognized for her mentorship, including her current NHLBI K24 award that has given her the opportunity for further training and protected time to allow stabilization and further growth of her mentoring and leadership in clinical research at OHSU and beyond. Dr. Hough is engaged in multiple research training programs at OHSU, including roles of PI of the OHSU CTSA-funded KL2 program and Executive Committee member of OHSU’s NHLBI-funded Pulmonary T32. She has also served as a standing member of NHLBI’s Mentored Patient-Oriented Research Study Section (MPOR), and on the advisory committees of multiple T32’s (Universities of Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania).