Training for anaesthetists to attain basic, intermediate and higher level competencies in pain medicine, as specified by the Faculty of Pain Medicine of the Royal College of Anaesthetists, should be provided. Where higher or advanced pain training is not feasible within an individual hospital, it should be available within the region.60
Anaesthetists with a substantial commitment to paediatric anaesthesia should have satisfied the higher and advanced level competency-based training requirements in paediatric anaesthesia on the 2010 RCoA Curriculum or have completed the final stage of training (stage 3) and specialist interest area in the 2021 RCoA Curriculum or equivalent.3 It is recognised that anaesthetists involved in highly specialised areas such...
A system should be in place to ensure that those requiring antenatal and postnatal anaesthetic referral are seen and assessed by a senior obstetric anaesthetist, usually an autonomously practising anaesthetist, within a suitable time frame. Where the workload is high, consideration should be given to risk stratification so that not all women are required to attend in person, by using...
When the anaesthetist is informed of a request for regional analgesia (and the circumstances would be suitable for this type of analgesia) the anaesthetist should attend within 30 minutes of being informed. Only in exceptional circumstances should this period be longer, and in all cases attendance should be within one hour. There should be a clear escalation plan for instances where...
The emergency team should be led by an autonomously practising anaesthetist (see Glossary) and include other healthcare professionals involved in the delivery of anaesthesia for emergency surgery, including other departments such as radiology, medicine and emergency departments.3 Hospitals should consider developing teams of anaesthetists, surgeons and perioperative physicians with particular interest and expertise in high-risk emergency surgery.90
December 2022 saw the final conversion of the initial dataset into a web-based survey tool. Further testing followed, which was exciting and challenging in equal measure. We are very grateful to our beta-testers who tested the questionnaire to destruction to ensure its future functionality.
Their feedback has been fundamental to the next steps in the project, even though their key finding was that the questionnaire was too long. The length of the form was originally dictated by airway experts from around the world with the aim of developing a set of questions they believed would capture all relevant data around an eFONA episode. To reduce its length, a ‘Delphi’ exercise is underway which will identify and agree on the fundamental questions to be answered when reporting an eFONA event.
