Dr Nava and Dr Loh tell us how rewarding and enjoyable they've found their HSRC fellowship in the first 12 months of their tenures.
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It's good to talk: Frances Bright, our Associate Director of Marketing and Communications tells us about our 'Let's Talk' events for our members and why we'd love to see you there.
The College hosts regular online ‘Let’s Talk’ events for our members. These meetings are an opportunity for you to talk with College representatives about whatever’s on your mind.
You might have questions or feedback for us, or you might want to share your views or experiences on any number of issues affecting the specialty.
With new opportunities on the horizon, we intensify our campaign to pressure UK governments into action in 2025.
Two months ago, we published an updated UK State of the Nation report, providing a comprehensive overview of the anaesthetic workforce, retention challenges, and future projections. The NHS urgently needs more anaesthetists.
Increasing demand – driven by factors such as an ageing and growing population – combined with an inadequate supply of anaesthetists due to insufficient training places and poor retention, has exacerbated the shortfall. This gap has grown from around 1,400 anaesthetists in 2020 to 1,900 in 2022 (15% below what is needed to meet demand).
We need to act on this and aim to build on progress from the last few years. Our first State of the Nation report, published in 2022, along with a wider programme of influencing work, helped secure government funding for an additional 70 ST4 anaesthetic training places each year from 2022 to 2024 in England. This helped to reduce the bottleneck between core and higher anaesthetic training, with the number of applications per place dropping from 2.67 in 2021 to 1.64 in 2024. In Wales, six new higher anaesthetic training places were granted in 2023; in Scotland, six new places were granted in 2024. However, many more are needed to address the workforce shortfall.
This milestone anniversary allows us to look back and see what the scheme has achieved, as well as what there's still to do.
This article looks at how anaesthetists in India and the UK are improving patient care using digital technology to achieve great results quickly and more efficiently.
Some are very familiar – a growing, aging population with increasing levels of chronic health problems and significant inequalities in care provision. Others are a factor of the Indian system which Ravi describes as ‘chaotic’.
A key issue underpinning that chaos is the distribution of physicians, 80% of whom practice in urban areas while 70% of the population live rural lives.
Ravi and colleagues are using cutting-edge digital technology to improve healthcare provision in India by introducing ‘comprehensive connected care’. This hub-and-spoke model uses digital connectivity to exchange data and information between centrally located expert clinicians and those caring for patients. For example staff in 5G-enabled ambulances transporting very sick people over long distances receive advice from critical care physicians who have all the patient’s clinical data at their fingertips.
Dr Christopher Timmis, ST6 Anaesthetic and Intensive Care, Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital tells us how a multidisciplinary hospital sports team will always be the winning side.
The anaesthetic department at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital started a mixed social hockey team during the summer months. Critics who preferred non-team sports argued the organiser was trying to boost his weak CV prior to future consultant applications, but the main aim was always to have fun!
Dr Sharma and Dr Russell tell us about their climate change course for health professionals from across the globe.
This first report, an assessment of the scientific basis of climate change and its impacts and future risks, highlighted the importance of climate change as a global challenge with universal consequences which required international collaboration, cooperation and action.
Unfortunately, all these years later we haven’t made as much progress as we should have done across the world. The latest (2023) Lancet Countdown Report 'underscores the imperative for a health-centred response in a world facing irreversible harms. Climate inaction is costing lives and livelihoods today, with new global projections revealing the grave and mounting threat to health of further delayed action on climate change’. How can we take action? What can we do? You can all achieve so much more than you believe, and we would like to guide, support and empower you to do so.
It's time for us to take action together.
Could you be part of next year’s cohort of CR&I fellows? Dr Adam Hunt tells us about the many wider benefits of a fellowship.
Would you like dedicated time to build your experience in research and QI while continuing clinical practice? Perhaps, you’re looking for mentorship from leading clinicians, researchers and policymakers in perioperative medicine? A fellowship with the Centre for Research and Improvement (CR&I) could be a perfect fit.
Alongside several other fellows, I’ve had the pleasure of a CR&I fellowship for the past year. Fellowships generally last 12 months, however several previous fellows have used the opportunity to develop proposals and obtain funding for higher degrees to continue their work. Fellows are attached to RCoA research projects, previously including PQIP, NELA, the QI Working Group, SNAPs and NAPs, among others.
Dr Gohil and Dr Eleanor Whittingham from Warwick Hospital tell us how they used a 3-D printer to produce a solution to a safety issue.
3-D printers were once the remit of science fiction but are now relatively cheap, available and simple to use. Dr Gohil and Dr Eleanor Whittingham from Warwick Hospital tell us how they used a 3-D printer to solve a safety issue.
Dr James Wicker updates us on AWN's important work, which involves members sharing ideas and supporting each other.
The Anaesthetic Workforce: UK State of the Nation Report 2024 was a sobering reminder of the challenging working environment we find ourselves in. An Anaesthetic Wellbeing Network was born two years before that, meeting online for the first time in February 2022.
It was an attempt to share ideas on how to improve the working conditions of healthcare providers within a network of anaesthetists and clinicians with an interest in this field from the Kent, Surrey and Sussex/London region. The group has proved to be very successful, and has grown, with colleagues from around the country joining virtually, every few months.
So, what have we achieved as a group and what do we hope to do next?