Anaesthesia 2025 podcast - Human Factors
In this podcast, recorded at our Anaesthesia 2025 conference, Professor and Consultant Anaesthetist Helen Higham talks to Dr Paul Southall about her work and career improving the the 'complex and adaptive system' of anaesthesia often given by its shorthand, 'human factors'.
For this work Helen was awarded the Hewitt Lectureship, given to established senior clinicians, academic experts or pioneers in their fields who have advanced the science or art of anaesthetic practice.
Paul and Helen discuss her research interests, which include human factors and simulation-based education in healthcare, and her current projects focused on systems-based approaches to safety in primary care, human factors in low to middle income healthcare settings and the use of virtual reality to train healthcare professionals.
Helen gives us an insight into her career and professional life, and bangs the drum for the importance of quality improvement, simulation and team-based learning and how central anaesthesia and its culture is to these practices in medicine.
Recorded 20 May 2025
Related information:
Our Anaesthesia 2026 conference will take place in Brighton and online over three days in May 2026. If you want to hear from leaders in anaesthesia and get the latest insights and professional development book by 31 December to get 20% off. More details: Anaesthesia 2026 | The Royal College of Anaesthetists
Helen is an Associate Professor in the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Oxford, a Consultant Anaesthetist at the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Associate Dean for Simulation and Patient Safety at NHSE-Thames Valley.
She is the Director of OxSTaR, the University of Oxford’s simulation and patient safety research centre, (www.oxstar.ox.ac.uk ). Helen has led and supported many safety incident investigations in the NHS and has delivered national training programmes in systems-based incident investigation. She was a founding executive member and a past president of the Association for Simulated Practice in Healthcare in the UK and provides expert input for national committees in patient safety and human factors training, the Foundation Curriculum and the Safe Anaesthesia Liaison Group. She currently leads the Human Factors module on the Masters in Surgical Science and Practice in the University of Oxford.
Her research interests include human factors and simulation-based education in healthcare with current projects focused on system based approaches to safety in primary care, human factors in low to middle income healthcare settings and the use of virtual reality to train healthcare professionals.
Paul qualified from Medical School in 2008, and undertook anaesthetic training in the Birmingham School of Anaesthesia. He was appointed as a consultant in 2018.
Clinically, his areas of interest are major urological surgery, day case anaesthesia, and cardiopulmonary exercise testing.
His main non-clinical areas of interest are sustainability in healthcare, and wellbeing. Within the College, Paul sits on the MMD Board, the SAS Committee, and the Ethics Committee. He is also one of the Environmental Advisors to the College and Chair of the Sustainability Committee.