Dr Margarita Burmester

MRCP FRCPCH FFICM MAcadMEd

Co director of The Bright Futures™ programme 

Lead Consultant Paediatric Intensive Care Unit, Royal Brompton Hospital

Senior Lecturer, National Heart and Lung Institute (NHLI)

Director SPRinT programme

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Biography

Dr Margarita Burmester is a leading consultant paediatric specialist based in London with over 30 years’ experience who is trained in all aspects of paediatrics. This includes preventative paediatric care, general paediatric care, paediatric cardiac intensive care and paediatric critical care, as well as child development, child health education, infant colic, and health screening and surveillance.

With a passion for preventing ill health, Dr Burmester is the co-founder and director of the award winning Bright Futures Programme an extensive all-encompassing health surveillance and screening programme for families based on the American Academy of Pediatrics model. This programme is currently available at 77 Wimpole Street and at the Chiswick Medical Centre, where Dr Burmester consults privately, offering paediatric care, child health surveillance, and health check-ups.

Dr Burmester qualified from St Thomas’ Hospital Medical School, University of London, in 1989. Since then, she has worked in Canada at the Toronto Hospital for Sick Children, in the USA at Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard University, and in London at Great Ormond Street Hospital.

Dr Burmester was awarded her postgraduate certification in clinical education from King’s College University London in 2016, and has been both a Fellow of the Higher Education Authority and a Member of the Academy of Medical Educators. In addition to her dedicated private practice, Dr Burmester has been a consultant paediatric intensivist at the Royal Brompton Hospital, London since 2002, where she was director of paediatric intensive care from 2009-2023. In 2008, Dr Burmester founded the multiple prize winning patient-safety educational SPRinT (Simulated Interprofessional Team Training) programme at Royal Brompton Hospital, with the objective of enhancing patient care.

Dr Burmester was the President of the Paediatrics and Child Health section of the Royal Society of Medicine from 2018 to 2021, and is a senior lecturer at the National Heart and Lung Institute. She has authored multiple publications, presented at numerous lectures, and has developed patented tools for patient care improvement. Dr Burmester’s clinical performance has been recognised nationally through receiving the silver clinical excellence award given to the top 1.8% of all consultants, and she is a co-recipient of a prestigious Wellcome Trust Award.

Following her many quality improvement initiatives, Dr Burmester has been appointed “Q” fellow by the Health Foundation UK. As paediatrician and mother of three children, Dr Burmester is passionate about prioritising children’s futures and understands the importance of maximising children’s health so that they can look forward to the brightest possible future.

As paediatrician and mother of three children, Dr Burmester is passionate about prioritising children’s futures and understands the importance of maximising children’s health so that they can look forward to the brightest possible future.

Areas of expertise

Health check up

A health assessment is a preventative measure to help find health problems before they start. They can also tell whether a person is at risk of developing certain health problems.

Preventive Paediatrics

Preventive paediatrics is defined as the prevention of disease and the promotion of physical, emotional and social well-being of children to reach optimal growth and development. 

 Clinical expertise

Dr Burmester is an expert in all aspects of critical care in children and has given over 50 presentations to academic meetings throughout the world. She has led a team of 10 consultant paediatric intensivists since 2011, and specialises in improving children’s health.

She contributes to national strategy through advising the national paediatric critical care clinical reference group and in her role as vice president of the Paediatric Intensive care society (PICS). She has also been president of the paediatric section of the Royal Society of Medicine since 2018.

Dr Burmester is co-founder and director of The Bright Futures Programme (BFP), an extensive all-encompassing surveillance and screening programme designed to enable children to look forward to their brightest future possible.

 

Education

Margarita’s education interests are in improving patient care and safety through using simulation to teach inter-professional teamwork and systems improvement. In 2008, she founded the SPRinT (Simulated interPRofessional Team Training) programme at Royal Brompton Hospital in order to enhance patient care and safety at the frontline clinical environment through high level, high stakes in situ interprofessional simulated team training.

This award-winning, patient safety educational programme now trains over 100 interprofessional staff each year, and delivers facilitator courses for 50-60 professionals/year in human factors, leadership, team training and simulation regionally and nationally

She was a founding member of the CSSC (Clinical Skills and Simulation Centre) – a joint venture between Royal Brompton and Royal Marsden hospitals, and was a Board of Director member of the International Pediatric Simulation Symposia & Workshops (IPSSW) from 2011-14 and Secretary and Research Lead for the Paediatric Intensive Care Society Education, Learning and Simulation (PICSELS) group 2010-14.

Currently Dr Burmester enjoys executive membership of ASPiH (Association for Simulated Practice in Healthcare) since 2016, Simulation Co-Chair for Health Education North West London (HENWL) and sits on the simulation working group of the European Society of Paediatric & Neonatal Intensive Care (ESPNIC). She contributed to the Health Education England strategy for simulation based education 2018.

Dr Burmester is a senior lecturer at the National Heart and Lung Institute (NHLI), Imperial College London.

Research interests

Margarita has researched innovative adult learning techniques and how they can translate into clinical effectiveness and improvement. She has published multiple articles, delivered numerous lectures and workshops, and is a co-recipient of a Wellcome Trust award for research into micro- communication in teamwork.

Margarita has led on innovative research into new models targeted to simulated cardiac emergency training, including the patented Harley and TOM open chest models. These have been used to deliver new quality improvement strategies in patient care and safety.

She has contributed to international research through investigation of paediatric early warning scores, trialling methodologies to mitigate clinical deterioration. Margarita was awarded a Q (Quality) fellow (Health Foundation) since 2017 and has been a judge for the Health Service Journal (HSJ) Patient’s Safety Awards since 2016.