Search

SAS doctors play a pivotal role within the anaesthetic workforce, and it is imperative for organisations to establish robust support structures to nurture their professional development. Unlocking the full potential of each SAS doctor not only benefits them personally, but also augments the services they provide and ultimately enhances patient care.

SAS doctors are crucial in anaesthesia, necessitating robust support structures for their growth. Unleashing their potential both benefits them personally and enhances patient care. Vital support includes that of an SAS tutor, a trust local negotiating committee representative, and an SAS advocate. The Guidelines for the Provision of Anaesthesia Services (GPAS) define exemplary departments and highlight non-clinical attributes vital for success. Notably, roles like ‘SAS clinical lead’ and ‘SAS mentor’ empower SAS doctors for self-determined career paths.

At the recent College Tutors’ Meeting in June, the submissions for the annual poster competition were judged. The three highest-scored abstracts were selected for oral presentation at the meeting. 

• Dr Amrit Dhadda, The Welsh School of Anaesthesia, was awarded first place.
• Dr April Lu, Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust and Dr Charindri Wariyapola, Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, came in joint second place.

Find out the latest appointments approved, and with sadness we record the deaths of some of our fellows. 

We have recently been adding some important updates to the Revalidation section of the College website, and we would like to draw your attention to these.

The first update focuses on appraisal: a key component of revalidation is the annual appraisal during which doctors will discuss their supporting information to demonstrate that they are continuing to meet the principles and values set out in Good Medical Practice.¹

Find out the latest appointments approved, and with sadness we record the deaths of some of our fellows. 

Authors:

• Dr Anna Simpson ST7 Anaesthetics, Bristol Royal Infirmary
• Dr Neil Botting CT3 Anaesthetics, Worthing Hospital
• Dr Joe Hetherington ST6 Geriatric and General Internal Medicine, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust
• Hannah Wilson Consultant Anaesthetist, Bristol Royal Infirmary
• Dr Claire Swarbrick SNAP-3 Fellow Specialty Registrar, Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital
• Dr Jude Partridge Consultant Anaesthetist, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust
• Dr Patrick Thorburn Consultant in Anaesthetics and Intensive Care Medicine, Worthing Hospital

The Associate Principal Investigator (API) scheme is a new initiative from the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) which aims to formalise research involvement for those not normally exposed to research in their day-to-day jobs.

The aim is to help develop health professionals to become the Principal Investigators (PIs) of the future. It is a six-month, in-work training opportunity providing practical research experience in order to learn what it is like to deliver an NIHR portfolio study at a local level guided by an enthusiastic PI.¹ It has endorsement from 16 Medical Royal Colleges, including the Royal College of Anaesthetists, and at present there are 330 studies eligible for the scheme, which can recruit one API per site every six months.

7 November 1925 to 9 May 2022

DSc, MD, PhD, MB ChB, FRCA ( Hon), FGS, FRCS(Hon), FANZCA (Hon), FCAI(Hon)

Dr John Francis Nunn died after an acute episode of respiratory failure. He had spent the last four years of his life in residential care due to progressive vascular dementia.

John read medicine at Birmingham University, during which period he developed passions for climbing and geology. On graduation he went to Svalbard on a geological expedition as medical officer and ‘rock carrier’.

He returned to Birmingham to undertake his house jobs and, having married in 1949, went to Penang in lieu of conventional national service. There he became an anaesthetist, learning the art by hands-on experience and the science by correspondence with seniors back home.

Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer (ChatGPT) is the latest iteration freely available on the internet. Trained using transformer architecture, it generates human-like text by sifting through terabytes of data and billions of written works from internet sources¹ – many from familiar authors – to create human-like answers to prompts or questions.

As an experiment, I prompted ChatGPT to write this article, and it produced a not-terrible piece of work – although Reader, you will be reassured to know that this publication is man-made.

For your enjoyment, here is an example of a prompt related to anaesthesia: