2020 Annual Review: Championing anaesthesia by engaging members, policy makers and the public

Championing anaesthesia by engaging members, policy makers and the public

The College provides a powerful and collective voice for raising the profile of our fellows and members, their work, and of the specialty amongst the public, government, the media and health stakeholders across the UK. The communications and external affairs directorate played a crucial role in supporting our members during this year. A large focus of our work was in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which had an unprecedented impact on patients, our fellows and members, and in particular, on our anaesthetists-in-training.

Communications

The College spoke throughout 2020 with an engaging and authoritative voice on key issues in the health sector. The year saw a huge increase in the public profile and understanding of the central role of anaesthetists and intensivists in caring for the sickest patients with COVID-19.

When the virus started to spread, the communications team was quick to respond. In just five days, the team created the joint COVID-19 Guidance Hub for anaesthetists and intensivists. This rapidly became the central hub for all new guidance, information and resources to support the understanding and management of patients with COVID-19.

A  COVID-19 weekly eNewsletter was created and sent to our members, and we ensured that anaesthetists-in-training were kept up to date as much as possible on the changes to examinations, recruitment and training due to the impact of COVID-19. The work of our members was broadcast and written about in the national, trade and regional media, with over 290 pieces of high-profile media coverage generated over the year.

Policy and public affairs

Alongside our workforce and perioperative care policy projects, the policy and public affairs team responded to the challenges of COVID-19. Using the results from a series of COVID-19 ‘View from the Frontline’ surveys during the spring and summer, we were able to advocate for our members with policy makers and parliamentarians on key issues around:

• personal protective equipment
• COVID-19 testing
• anaesthetic drugs supply
• staff welfare and morale.

In December, looking forward to 2021, we launched our COVID-19 policy campaign.

The team’s high-impact work in 2020 around COVID-19, workforce and perioperative care was further underlined by the level of engagement throughout the year. This included 35 meetings with senior parliamentarians, seven urgent parliamentary questions, an open letter of support from the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, public recognition of our ground-breaking perioperative care Green Paper by NHS England’s National Medical Director, and the development of a key All Party Parliamentary Group event on the future of surgery.

Members at the heart of the College

The College is committed to building a strong, supportive and inclusive membership and professional body. Our membership numbers in 2020 continued to grow, with us now representing a combined membership of over 23,000 across the three specialties of anaesthesia, intensive care and pain medicine.

Two major projects were carried out over the year. The feedback from the 2020 membership survey carried out in the autumn will help us understand what benefits and services are valued, and how we can make improvements to better serve our membership and the specialty. In November, we launched our new Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. The roll-out of this into 2021 will deliver an easier, more seamless process for members around the administration of their membership and a better membership experience.

Patient information

With anaesthetists playing an important role in the care of two-thirds of all hospital patients and more than three million operations involving anaesthesia being given each year, access to a wide range of information about anaesthesia is high on the list of priorities for the College. In 2020, we launched translations of our most popular leaflets in more than 20 languages.

Guidance was written for adults and children about having an operation during the COVID-19 pandemic as part of the Centre for Perioperative Care’s suite of patient information. Our high-quality information material was awarded the prestigious Patient Information Forum Trusted Information Creator Kitemark.

RCoA media coverage from January 2020 - December 2020