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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.

As I sit down to write this article, I am very much aware that today is the anniversary of the death of my mother. A strong-minded, intelligent and, above all, proud woman, her greatest fear as she became increasingly physically frail was a loss of dignity, something she had witnessed in the slow demise of her own mother.

From middle age onwards, she wrote me detailed letters describing what she would and would not tolerate as she got older, and instructing me, the only doctor in the family, to do everything possible to help her to die peacefully when the intolerable became manifest. Sadly, the law forbade such measures and, despite receiving excellent care in her failing years, she suffered much of the indignity that she most feared before passing.