Dr Fiona Donald writes for the last time for the Bulletin as President reflecting on her tenure and career.
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Jono Brüün updates you on the College's approach to diversity, equity and inclusion.
Jono Brüün updates you on the College's approach to diversity, equity and inclusion.
Dr Wicker and Dr Sanders provide some helpful top tips for anaesthetist wellbeing.
Wellbeing is a fashionable term at present and for some will cause instant eye-rolling. We sympathise with this reaction – the word has a lot of unhelpful connotations including, probably most problematically, that it offers yet another opportunity to fail at something else in your life. You are already overwhelmed by work and home stressors, and now you’re also not getting your wellbeing right and that’s why you’re struggling.
Please know this gentle advice comes from a place of compassion and acknowledgement of the wonderful job you all do. After everything anaesthetists have had to deal with over the last few years, we tip our hats to the courage and resilience of our profession.
Here are some top tips for anaesthetist wellbeing (in no particular order):
Dr Greig makes the case for clear and consistent terminology and why it's important.
Critical terms must be clearly and consistently used.
For example, UK law recognises protected titles; ‘general practitioner’, ‘registered nurse’, or ‘paramedic’ have specific meanings, and to use one carries legal weight. Interestingly ‘surgeon’ appears on the GMC’s list of legally protected titles, but ‘anaesthetist’ does not.
While meaning can appear clear from context, ambiguity creates risk. It need not be highly technical terminology to cause problems. Misunderstanding of ‘OK’ contributed to the 1977 Tenerife air disaster, where a tower controller probably intended ‘I acknowledge your request to take off’, but the flight commander understood ‘you are giving me clearance for take-off’. The Boeing 747 accelerated down the runway, and shortly thereafter collided with another aircraft.
This milestone anniversary allows us to look back and see what the scheme has achieved, as well as what there's still to do.
Read the latest letters submitted by members in summer's Bulletin.
Dear Editor
Drs Passi and Oliver state in their article that ‘in-vivo studies to quantify the reduction in serum progesterone concentration following sugammadex have not been performed…’. They are incorrect in this statement.
Devoy et al performed a prospective observational study comparing changes in serum oestrogen and progesterone in women undergoing surgery. 60 patients on hormonal contraception received sugammadex; 30 patients were not on hormonal contraception and did not receive sugammadex; 32 patients were not on hormonal contraception and did receive sugammadex. Blood samples pre, 15-minutes post, 240 min post sugammadex administration were taken to measure oestrogen and progesterone levels.
Our full selection of back digital issues has you covered and will keep you up-to-date and informed on what’s happening in our specialty.
Our full selection of back digital issues will keep you up-to-date and informed on what’s happening in our specialty. We hope you continue enjoying your membership magazine.
Dr Moore argues helping patients stop smoking is very much the business of anaesthetists as well as government and public-health initiatives.
As a medical student, someone once told me that helping patients stop smoking was the single best intervention available to us as doctors. I’ve never found a reference for that, but it stuck with me.
While I might not have the evidence for my claim, we do know that each year, smoking-related disease costs the NHS £2.6 billion and causes up to 76,000 deaths. The good news is that rates of smoking are decreasing each year, with the latest figure at 12.9%.
Aside from the general health benefits of quitting, several specific perioperative outcomes exist.
Dr Plessis looks at burnout - what causes it, the impact, signs and symptoms and what we can do to mitigate it.
In the operating theatre environment, the perpetual demands, emotional toll, and the need for precision contribute to the potential vulnerability of anaesthetic staff to burnout.
What is burnout?
Burnout, as recognised by the World Health Organization in the International Classification of Diseases, is a syndrome characterised by ‘symptoms’ in three domains:
- feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion
- increased mental distance from the job or feelings of negativity and cynicism related to the job
- reduced professional efficacy.
Burnout is not classified as a ‘health condition’. Instead, it is an occupational phenomenon and due to chronic, unmanaged, workplace stress. People who are burned out are also at high risk of developing mental health conditions, for example depression and generalised anxiety disorder.
Dr Sharma and Dr Russell tell us about their climate change course for health professionals from across the globe.
This first report, an assessment of the scientific basis of climate change and its impacts and future risks, highlighted the importance of climate change as a global challenge with universal consequences which required international collaboration, cooperation and action.
Unfortunately, all these years later we haven’t made as much progress as we should have done across the world. The latest (2023) Lancet Countdown Report 'underscores the imperative for a health-centred response in a world facing irreversible harms. Climate inaction is costing lives and livelihoods today, with new global projections revealing the grave and mounting threat to health of further delayed action on climate change’. How can we take action? What can we do? You can all achieve so much more than you believe, and we would like to guide, support and empower you to do so.
It's time for us to take action together.