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Firstly, participation in research can be claimed as a CPD activity to help meet this supporting information requirement. Research will often be done online and may be used to supplement the knowledge gained from another CPD activity such as attending a course or event. 

It can be claimed on the basis of one credit per hour when accompanied by reflection showing how it has applied to your scope of clinical practice.

Some doctors make reference to the prompts: ‘What?’, ‘So what?’, and ‘Now what?’, and the CPD activities section in the Lifelong Learning Platform features three corresponding boxes for reflection entitled: ‘Review’, ‘Experience gained’ and ‘Resulting change’.

Wellbeing is a fashionable term at present and for some will cause instant eye-rolling. We sympathise with this reaction – the word has a lot of unhelpful connotations including, probably most problematically, that it offers yet another opportunity to fail at something else in your life. You are already overwhelmed by work and home stressors, and now you’re also not getting your wellbeing right and that’s why you’re struggling.

Please know this gentle advice comes from a place of compassion and acknowledgement of the wonderful job you all do. After everything anaesthetists have had to deal with over the last few years, we tip our hats to the courage and resilience of our profession.

Here are some top tips for anaesthetist wellbeing (in no particular order):

Some of you might be asking (or have forgotten) – what is this eFONA registry thing? Why? 

In short, emergency front-of-neck access is an unusual, emergency event about which we have limited information – what leads up to it, what happens during the event, what happens afterwards. Various studies, not least NAP4, have highlighted the need to understand more – so, the eFONA registry project was born.

I have recently been appointed as an Examiner for the Royal College of Anaesthetists FRCA examination. It was a moment of great pride and achievement for me, but also very humbling and surprising to know that I was the first SAS doctor to be appointed as an examiner for the College. It has made me reflect on my journey as an SAS doctor and how I got to become an examiner.

I completed my undergraduate medical and postgraduate anaesthetic training in Mumbai, India. Like a lot of doctors from India in the early 2000s, I chose to come to the UK on a ‘permit-free training’ visa to train and work in the NHS, be better paid, and have a better balance between work and life. I first applied as a clinical observer at Basingstoke hospital and then was successful at interview for the senior house officer (SHO) post in August 2003. This was the first time that I became aware of the SAS grade of non-training doctors in the UK. In 2003, Basingstoke already had six SAS doctors on full-time or part-time contracts. They were a motivated group of doctors who had their own fixed lists and worked independently anaesthetising for complex cases. But at that time, like everyone else, I was intent on trying to train and become a consultant.

During 2024, almost 7.4 million unique actions were completed within it, while the LLP support team closed 17,000 emails, ensuring that customer service remains our top priority. The LLP serves more than 25,000 users, with many of these being anaesthetists in training.

The LLP team has been busy delivering a range of webinars and workshops as part of our commitment to helping and supporting doctors on their individual and collective training paths. One important webinar was a pre-ARCP preparation workshop held in January 2025, with trainers and trainees contributing useful guidance, information and top-tips to navigate the process. This supplemented previous introductory guidance covering reviewing the curriculum and creating ESSRs, HALOs and SLEs.

As this issue’s theme is training, we’ve picked out six for anaesthetists in training, supervisors, or anyone involved in training. We hope you find them interesting and helpful.

If you’d like us to feature resources from your subspecialty here, or have any other suggestions or feedback, please email us at education-resources@rcoa.ac.uk.

I'm the RCoA’s Dinwoodie Simulation Fellow and an ST5 anaesthetist in training in the Thames Valley region. I’m pleased to take the opportunity to update you on some exciting developments in simulation.

Anaesthetics was an early pioneer in utilising simulation, recognising its benefits in rehearsing uncommon emergencies and how it can be used to develop non-technical skills. Anaesthetists in training can now expect simulation-based education to feature frequently throughout their training as they develop skills and practise the management of critical incidents, and it will continue to feature throughout our careers. Anaesthetists are also frequently seen delivering the simulation-based education, whether that is for peers or other members of the multidisciplinary team. Simulation as an educational tool has many guises, including part-task trainers to rehearse a skill before performing on a patient, sessions in a dedicated simulation suite and, most recently, immersive technologies such as virtual reality.

Returning to work following a prolonged period out of training is daunting, whether that be due to parental leave, sick leave, carer’s leave or for Out-of-Programme time. 

Anaesthetists in training know all too well the stresses that come with frequently rotating between different hospitals and departments, with three- and six-monthly rotations being quite the norm in some deaneries.

Having a child is a life changing experience, and many would hope that their place of work remained constant throughout the beginnings of parenthood. Frequent job rotations with a diverse curriculum to work through means trainees are potentially carrying out their return to work in a new environment while juggling the stresses of childcare and pressures of getting back up-to-speed at work.

Our workforce is undoubtedly changing.

The latest GMC workforce report shows a striking 18% increase in the number of licensed doctors on its register between 2018 and 2022. Numbers have increased by 46%, most markedly among SAS and Locally Employed Doctors (LEDs), which is almost entirely down to a marked increase in the latter. LEDs are a very heterogenous group, including doctors just after foundation training (‘F3’), doctors in posts between core and specialty training, locum consultants and post-training fellows seeking further subspecialty experience. The biggest contingent however are trust-grade doctors and clinical fellows who arrive with medical qualifications gained abroad. The GMC currently registers significantly more international medical graduates (IMGs) than UK graduates every year at present.

There are also notable changes in employment behaviours among this cohort. Recently, significantly more of these IMGs have stayed in the UK beyond the short-term and more have entered training than previously. Some will seek entry to the specialist register via the portfolio pathway, but many hope to enter training in our specialty, typically at ST4 level.