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Just as you are by the side of your patients when it matters the most, the Royal College of Anaesthetists is by your side to support you through your career.

Postmenarcheal female patients should be made aware of the need for clinicians to establish pregnancy status before surgery or procedures involving anaesthesia. While obtaining and documenting this information is primarily the responsibility of the ope...

Postmenarcheal female patients should be made aware of the need for clinicians to establish pregnancy status before surgery or procedures involving anaesthesia. While obtaining and documenting this information is primarily the responsibility of the operating surgeon or paediatrician, anaesthetists may also feel it necessary to confirm that such checks have been performed.73

Chapter 6: Guidelines for the Provision of Anaesthesia Services for Day Surgery 2025

Special considerations for younger children undergoing day case tonsillectomy/ adenoidectomy surgery should be made depending of expertise at the centre and current national guidelines. Skilled preoperative assessment services, including thorough assessment of children with obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) and experienced anaesthetists and surgeon are required to deliver this safely. Surgery and perioperative care, including care on the post-anaesthetic care unit...

Advisory Appointments Committees and Job Description Approvals

The College is responsible for reviewing job descriptions and nominating assessors to attend Advisory Appointments Committee (AAC) panels for all non-training posts in the NHS in England, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man/Channel Islands.

Promoting training in awake videolaryngoscopic intubation

Professor Andrew Smith and Dr Olusola Oladosu provide suggestions to help colleagues at all levels become familiar with videolaryngoscopy.

The Difficult Airway Society (DAS) recommends awake tracheal intubation as a primary airway management technique in people with difficult airways. It can be achieved either by fibreoptic bronchoscopy or videolaryngoscopy. However, in our experience, despite the guidance, anaesthetists are sometimes reluctant to perform either.

While it’s useful to be able to perform both techniques depending on what’s needed for the patient, videolaryngoscopy requires fewer technical skills and can be applied with a comparable success rate and safety profile to fibreoptic intubation. Furthermore, the more commonly the procedure is undertaken, the more that anaesthetists and the wider anaesthesia and theatre teams come to regard it as a straightforward, almost ‘everyday’ event. This creates a virtuous circle where it then becomes even easier to consider and perform.

With this in mind, we suggest that anaesthetists should be introduced to awake video intubation early in their career. Seeing that airway management can take place without general anaesthesia opens up a range of possibilities and gives them further confidence for managing the various patients that could present with anticipated and unanticipated difficult airways.