Anaesthetists and Aerospace Medicine
In this episode of Anaesthesia on Air, Dr Mike Grocott hosts a fascinating discussion with Prof Thomas Smith, recently awarded the RCoA Macintosh Professorship, given 'in recognition of outstanding contributions to the wider field of anaesthesia in a senior academic or clinician' for his work in aerospace medicine.
This episode was recorded at the 2023 Winter Symposium, immediately following Tom's award oration, titled 'Anaesthetists and Aerospace Medicine in a New Era of Human Spaceflight', and based on his Anaesthesia journal article of the same name.
In this podcast, Mike and Tom discuss the overlap between aerospace medicine and anaesthesia and perioperative medicine, the effects of air travel and the commercialisation and wider access to suborbital spaceflight. And Tom shares some of his own experiences in this fascinating and developing area, including on nausea-inducing parabolic 'zero-g' flights.
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Prof Smith is a clinician-scientist specialising in Aerospace medicine, cardiopulmonary physiology and anaesthetics. He is a Consultant Anaesthetist at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust and has worked extensively in aeromedical critical care as a flying doctor.
He graduated from medicine at the University of Adelaide, Australia, and was based at the University of Oxford (2003-2017) before moving to King's. He is a former Rhodes Scholar and Churchill Fellow. Prof Smith is a Fellow of the Aerospace Medical Association and an Academician of the International Academy of Aviation and Space Medicine. He is the UK Medical Research Council’s advisor in aerospace medicine, Chair of the Royal Aeronautical Society's Aerospace Medicine Group, and a member of the UK Space Agency's Space Exploration Advisory Committee.
Serving his second term on Council, Professor Mike Grocott is the Professor of Anaesthesia and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Southampton, consultant in Critical Care Medicine at University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust, director-designate of the Southampton NIHR Biomedical Research Centre (2020-2027) and an NIHR Senior Investigator (2018-26). He served as vice-president of the College (2019-20) and is deputy-chair of the national Centre for Perioperative Care (CPOC). He was previously chair of the Education Training and Examinations Board (2018-19).
Mike lives in the New Forest with his wife, Denny – anaesthetist, intensivist and perioperative physician – and with three young children and a chocolate working cocker spaniel. If he wasn’t working in anaesthesia, Mike would be heading for the mountains (again).