COVID-19: Current Treatment Guidelines for the Critically Ill

Steven Q. Simpson, MD is Professor of Medicine at the University of Kansas in the Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine, where he previously served as Division Director, Director of three ICUs, Chair of the Sepsis Team, and Chair of Multidisciplinary Critical Care. He has done research in all areas of severe sepsis from molecular and cellular mechanisms, to translational studies, to quality improvement studies.

He was a founder, in 2005, of the Midwest Critical Care Collaborative, a multidisciplinary and interprofessional collaborative effort to improve the quality of critical care services throughout the Midwest. In 2007, he initiated the Kansas Sepsis Project, a statewide program to improve severe sepsis care and outcomes throughout the state via continuing education both in sepsis and in quality improvement principles, and via inter-professional collaboration. He is currently heading a BCBS-sponsored sepsis collaborative among Kansas City metro area hospitals and is a contributing faculty member of the ongoing Surviving Sepsis Campaign collaboratives, leading the effort in the Midwest. He is a participant in the 2016 review and update of the Surviving Sepsis Campaign Guidelines.

Dr. Simpson was the North American co-chair of the International Single Day Point Prevalence Study for Severe Sepsis and Septic Shock (IMPRESS) in the fall of 2013. During his tenure at the University of New Mexico, he contributed to the discovery of a particular form of sepsis, the Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome, and published numerous papers on the clinical description, the hemodynamic description, and the approach to supportive care for patients with the syndrome, including extracorporeal hemodynamic and oxygenation support.

Dr. Simpson received his M.D. degree from the University of Kansas in 1983. He completed residency training in Internal Medicine at KU in 1986 and fellowship training in Pulmonary Diseases at Rush Medical College in 1989. He has been a faculty member at Rush Medical College, the University of New Mexico, and the University of Kansas. He is a regular reviewer for the journals Critical Care Medicine and CHEST, and he reviews on an ad hoc basis for Shock, the Journal of Intensive Care, JAMA, Virology, and Antiviral Therapy. He is the author of over 70 peer reviewed and invited manuscripts, book chapters, and web-based articles and presentations.

Dr. Simpson was the Third Eli Lilly and Company Distinguished Scholar in Critical Care Medicine, sponsored by the American College of Chest Physicians and the Chest Foundation for his work in reducing geographic disparities for severe sepsis care (the Kansas Sepsis Project). In 2013 he delivered the Roger C. Bone Memorial Lecture at the annual international meeting of the American College of Chest Physicians, describing the Kansas Sepsis Project. Dr. Bone was Dr. Simpson’s early career mentor and was the progenitor of the criteria used throughout the world to recognize severe sepsis.

Laura Evans, MD, MSc, is a professor of medicine at the University of Washington and the Medical Director of Critical Care at the University of Washington Medical Center. Her interests focus on sepsis and preparedness for high-consequence infectious diseases, particularly on guideline development and implementation, as well as patient safety/quality improvement.  

Dr. Evans earned her medical degree at the University of Michigan and did her residency in internal medicine at Columbia University. She completed pulmonary and critical care medicine fellowship training and earned a Master of Science in epidemiology at the University of Washington. She then joined the New York University and Bellevue Hospital faculty in 2006.  In her role there, she led the evacuation of the Bellevue Hospital intensive care units in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. She was the clinical lead for New York City’s only patient with Ebola. She was associate program director for the pulmonary and critical care fellowship program at NYU for more than 10 years. After 14 years in NYC, she returned to Seattle in 2019.

She joined the steering committee of the Surviving Sepsis Campaign (SSC) in 2012 and was the co-chair of the past two revisions of the SSC adult sepsis guidelines and SSC COVID management guidelines co-chair. She also served as the critical care team lead for the National Institutes of Health COVID Management Guidelines. She is the current chair of the American Board of Internal Medicine’s Critical Care Medicine specialty board.