All anaesthetic equipment should be checked before use in accordance with the Association of Anaesthetists published guidelines. Anaesthetic machine checks should be recorded in a log and on the anaesthetic chart.16
Staff assigned to the role of anaesthetic assistant should not have any other duties that would prevent them from providing dedicated assistance to the anaesthetist during anaesthesia.41
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
It is important that local reporting systems should feed into national reporting systems, where relevant.86 Anaesthetists should contribute data as required, with the support of their organisation.
In an emergency situation involving a child requiring anaesthesia for an airway or head and neck procedure, the most experienced available anaesthetist and surgeon would be expected to provide life-saving care when transfer to a specialist facility is not feasible.
Local policies should be in place to define the scope of intraoperative monitoring by non-anaesthetist health care workers. These policies should meet the criteria proposed by RA-UK.16
Hospitals should consider providing specific regional anaesthesia lists for awake procedures, staffed by an anaesthetist with a special interest in regional anaesthesia. However, alternative lists for patients unable or unwilling to undergo awake surgery should be available.
Critically ill patients are complex and hold unique particularities that makes them more susceptible to side effects and complications of regional anaesthesia techniques. Experienced regional anaesthetists should perform/supervise regional anaesthesia techniques in these patients.
Departments should review the on-call responsibilities of anaesthetists as part of annual appraisal and job planning.57 Reviews should take into consideration subjective assessment of fatigue and consider seeking advice from an accredited specialist in occupational medicine if necessary. This may apply, but not exclusively, to older anaesthetists.54,58
A system should be in place to ensure that women requiring antenatal referral to an anaesthetist are seen and assessed by an anaesthetist, normally a consultant, within a suitable time frame. Ideally, this should be in the form of multidisciplinary team management of these high risk women. Where the workload is high consideration should be given to risk stratification so...
