Dr Fiona Donald tells us her professional highlights so far this year have been the conversations she's had with many of you across the country; helping her understand what you want from your membership and your views on key issues.
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Dr Wicker and Dr Sanders provide some helpful top tips for anaesthetist wellbeing.
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):
Dr Kumar shares his experience of choosing to act up as an ICU consultant, the intricate process involved, and lessons learnt.
In the dynamic and challenging world of healthcare, the decision to ‘act up’ as an intensive care unit (ICU) consultant is a significant step in a trainee doctor's career.
It marks a pivotal moment where one transitions from the supportive cocoon of training to the forefront of decision-making, all while still enjoying the protective umbrella of being a trainee.
In this article, I share my personal experience to shed light on why I chose to act up, the intricate process involved, and the invaluable lessons learned during this transformative period.
Dr Omar Khan attends the Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia. Due to the combined effects of extreme heat and huge crowds, he considers the responsibility of medical professionals to help when they're just bystanders.
Approximately two million people attend the Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia every year. The journey is obligatory for those who have the physical and financial means, once in a lifetime. The pilgrimage lasts five days and is based in and around the city of Makkah.
The climate is one of a hot desert with day temperatures regularly exceeding 45ºC (113ºF) during the summer. This is made all the tougher with average relative humidity reaching 33%. Pilgrims travel from around the world. They include all ages and backgrounds, and individuals with complex medical conditions.
I was lucky enough to be given the opportunity to attend this year. My journey began like any other pilgrim’s, initially solely focusing on the religious events ahead. The first few days went as planned, with challenging walks, but nothing more than I had physically and mentally prepared for. Things however changed as the days went on and as the weather deteriorated. I cannot emphasise enough the combined effects of extreme heat and huge crowds. Despite an umbrella to keep one out of direct sunlight and copious amounts of water consumption, heat exhaustion is relatively common. I was also soon to learn that heat stroke was becoming dangerously frequent during my time there. As anaesthetists, our challenge is often to keep patients undergoing major surgery warm. As I entered my hotel lobby, my job was to do the opposite and help cool my fellow pilgrims down!
Dr Sarah Muldoon looks at the conflict many consultants experience in their careers; giving patients the best care and providing meaningful training opportunities.
Dr Charlotte Redshaw explores neurodivergence and asks what extent our perception of vulnerability is a stereotypical one and how often we assume that an unlabelled person is neurotypical.
Differential attainment is a gap in attainment between two groups of people with differing characteristics in one or more areas. This article looks at how and why attainment can be affected in examinations.
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.
Read the latest letters submitted by members in the January 2023 Bulletin.
Read the latest letters submitted by members in the January 2023 Bulletin.
This article looks at how a preoperative assessment network was created to feed into the national networks and membership bodies promoting perioperative care/medicine.
I started working part-time for GIRFT (Getting it Right First Time) as a POA (Preoperative Assessment) national advisor in September 2022. Most POA non-medical leads will recognise that you are often working in a silo in a POA department. While we have a number of expert multidisciplinary-team (MDT) professionals who feed into and out of the department, the core ‘everyday’ team are predominantly non-medical staff.
It’s an area that has seen significant variation across the country, but for many POA will be the sole job for the staff who work there. The reason? They absolutely LOVE IT! Highly skilled and hugely rewarding, this area brings a huge amount of satisfaction and unity to identify potential challenges for our patients undergoing elective surgery, and is an opportunity to help educate and inform on perioperative risk.
Post pandemic, we have seen pivotal changes to the perioperative pathway with a focus on early assessment and optimisation for patients ‘while they wait’.1 Working for GIRFT and NHS England (NHSE) colleagues, specifically in elective recovery, has brought a new dimension to my role and, I hope, skills of influence, engagement and innovation to help drive forward the importance of all POA clinics, everywhere.