Search

The preoperative assessment service should enable multidisciplinary training for medical students, nurses, specialist doctors in training, allied health professionals, pharmacists and pharmacy technicians. Educational materials are available to facilitate this training.⁹² Schools of anaesthesia should give consideration to establishing specific modules in preoperative assessment and perioperative medicine for senior trainees.

Preoperative and perioperative educational resources should be made available to general practitioners and primary care staff who are instrumental in ‘first contact’ patient consultations prior to secondary care referral. This facilitates robust cross-boundary working relationships and agreed ‘fitness for referral’ protocols, while minimising delays in the patient journey.

Departments should support the anaesthetic workforce with adequate provision made for continuing professional development (CPD).

Trusts should commit themselves to provide the time and resources to educate those who provide intraoperative care for patients.¹⁵⁵

Theatre teams should undergo regular, multidisciplinary training that promotes teamwork, with a focus on human factors, effective communication and openness.¹⁵⁵

All staff should have access to adequate time, funding and facilities to undertake and update training that is relevant to their clinical practice, including annual mandatory training such as basic life support.¹⁶⁸

All members of the anaesthetic team should receive non-clinical training and education, which should be reflected in job plans and job planning. This might include a locally arranged list of topics (e.g. fire safety, consent, infection control, blood product administration, mental capacity, safeguarding children and vulnerable adults, communication skills). Some of this training will be mandatory under the legislation for...

All trainees must be appropriately clinically supervised at all times.⁶

All patients undergoing anaesthesia should be under the overall care of a consultant or other autonomously practising anaesthetist whose name is recorded as part of the anaesthetic record. ²⁷⁸

Departments of anaesthesia should ensure that a named supervisory consultant or other autonomously practising anaesthetist is available to all non-autonomously practising anaesthetists based on the training and experience of the individual doctor and the range and scope of their clinical practice.²⁷⁸ Where an anaesthetist is supervised by a consultant or other autonomously practising anaesthetist, they should be aware of their...