Anaesthesia and COVID - One Year On
Anaesthesia and COVID - One Year On
On 9 February 2021, the College hosted a flagship event, ‘Anaesthesia and COVID – One Year On’, attended virtually by 200 of the College’s members and key partners from across health and social care, Government and Parliament. On this page, you can watch all the speeches and presentations from the evening.
Baroness Jolly pays tribute to our anaesthetists’ extraordinary work during the pandemic, followed by Professor Stephen Powis, NHS England’s National Medical Director, who recognises the role anaesthetists are playing in balancing surgery while supporting the COVID effort. Professor Powis, situating perioperative care at the heart of the Government’s commitment to ‘build back better’, welcomes the UK’s first perioperative care green paper consultation.
College President Professor Ravi Mahajan then celebrates the unique contribution anaesthetists have made and outlines how the College is supporting the COVID-recovery and transformation of surgery. He then announces that the College is launching a new national campaign, ‘Anaesthesia – Fit for the Future’ to address the most pressing workforce challenges facing the specialty. Council members then offer moving examples of the collaborative work that they have seen, talk about how their hospitals have adapted, and pay special tribute to our trainees.
Finally, Professors Powis and Mahajan answered questions from the audience, starting with how to reconcile the need to address the surgical backlog with giving exhausted healthcare workers time to rest and recover.