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All patients requiring anaesthesia, pain management, or perioperative medical or intensive care should have a named and documented supervisory autonomously practising anaesthetist (see Glossary) who has overall responsibility for the care of the patient. To ensure the safety of patients, anaesthetists in training, staff grade, associate specialist and specialty (SAS) doctors who are not autonomously practising and anaesthesia associates...

Hospitals should have well-integrated arrangements that ensure anaesthetists covering long neurosurgical procedures or overrunning lists have regular breaks covered by an appropriate colleague for refreshment and comfort breaks.^6,7,8,9 If a case is expected to run over three sessions, consideration should be given to organising a second anaesthetist.

Any anaesthetist working on the labour ward should also regularly undertake non-obstetric work to ensure maintenance of a broad range of skills.

Anaesthetists should be an integral part of locally developed networks looking at obstetric services.²⁵

Anaesthetists caring for paediatric burns patients should be trained in paediatric multimodal pain management.⁵¹

Clinical leadership roles should be designed to be desirable and exciting opportunities for anaesthetists. Appointment processes to clinical leadership roles should be open and transparent.

Anaesthesia for children should be undertaken or supervised by senior anaesthetists who have undergone appropriate training. In the UK, all anaesthetists with a CCT or equivalent will have obtained higher paediatric anaesthetic training. There will be anaesthetists who have acquired more advanced competencies, thus allowing provision of a more extensive anaesthetic service, and those competencies should be maintained. Unless there...