Chapter 14 Vascular 2026

This chapter covering vascular anaesthesia is a new addition to the Raising the Standards: RCoA Quality Improvement Compendium. The Quality Improvement Compendium provides a manual of quality improvement (QI) and audit tools for anaesthetists. 

This chapter was first published in May 2026 and is due for review by November 2030.

This chapter aims to:

• provide comprehensive recipes for QI and audit in vascular anaesthesia
• provide practical examples based on QI methodology
• align with the RCoA’s Guidelines for the Provision of Anaesthesia Services in Vascular procedures, 2025  and associated ACSA standards  to deliver safe and effective vascular anaesthesia services to patients.

We encourage clinicians to consider the domains of quality: safe, effective, personal, timely, efficient and equitable care and to choose a balance of audits for assessing the quality of care using structure, process and outcome measures. These audits should sit within a departmental programme or personal portfolio that reflect all the different components of patient care, and stimulate improvement work when standards are not met. 

Anaesthetists should use the methods in this chapter and the basic template to create their own topics or adapt topics to  the particular needs of their local department and the patient groups that it serves.  

Use the menu on the left-hand side of this page to navigate to the individual QI and audit recipes that comprise this chapter.

For further information, please contact: QIBook@rcoa.ac.uk

Chapter Editors: Dr Vanessa Fludder and Dr Adam Pichel

QI Editor: Dr Michelle Lamont

RCoA Curriculum Advisor: Dr Gethin Pugh

Sections 14.1-14.3 map to the Perioperative Medicine and Health domain of the 2021 Curriculum

Sections 14.4-14.11 map to the Perioperative Medicine and Health and General Anaesthesia domains of the 2021 Curriculum