At Newham University Hospital there were extensive refurbishments taking place in order to make the theatre complex compliant with current fire-safety regulations. As well as this, there have been a number of fires in intensive care units in the UK over the past decade requiring full-scale staff and patient evacuation.

We realised that we were unsure ourselves of how we would manage such a situation, and so we looked up whether there were fire-safety guidelines specifically for anaesthetists. We came across the recent Association of Anaesthetists fire-safety and emergency evacuation guidelines, published in May 2021. One of the key recommendations was that all healthcare workers should have ‘practical walk-through and/or simulated evacuation training’ at least every two years.