In all hospitals undertaking major vascular anaesthesia a vascular anaesthetist should be appointed clinical lead (see Glossary) to manage service delivery. This should be recognised in their job plan, and they should be involved in multidisciplinary service planning and governance within the unit.
All patients requiring anaesthesia, pain management or perioperative medical or critical care should have a named and documented supervisory autonomously practising anaesthetist (see Glossary) who has overall responsibility for the care of the patient.
All anaesthetists should receive non-clinical training and education, which should be reflected in job plans and job planning. The list of topics should be agreed by the department according to local need, but is likely to cover management, education, EDI and communication skills.
A consultant or autonomously practising anaesthetist should be available to review an individual patient’s suitability for day surgery and to assist with preoperative optimisation, in discussion with medical specialists as appropriate. A referral service for nurses or appropriately trained allied health professionals to allow complex patients to have anaesthetic review should be developed.5,12,13
Adequate time for formal multidisciplinary team (MDT) handovers between shifts should be built into the timetable. In the case of the anaesthetist being otherwise engaged with work at the time of the MDT labour ward handover, a briefing from the midwifery and obstetric team should be sought at the earliest opportunity to facilitate a shared mental model of the existing...
Post menarcheal women should be made aware of the need for clinicians to establish pregnancy status before surgery or procedures involving anaesthesia. While obtaining and documenting this information is primarily the responsibility of the operating surgeon or paediatrician, anaesthetists may also feel it necessary to confirm that such checks have been performed. Trusts should have agreed policies and arrangements for...
Fellowship posts should be identified to allow additional training for those who wish to follow a career in thoracic anaesthesia to help ensure there are adequate numbers of skilled anaesthetists in the specialty. These should be suitable for trainees who wish to take time out of training programmes, or for those who are post certificate of completion of training. Such...
Families should be provided with written or web-based resources that provide information specific to anaesthesia before the planned surgery/procedure,80 and contact details for the preassessment team should be provided in case they have further questions or need to speak directly with their anaesthetist. The leaflet ‘Information for teenagers, children and parents’ is available from the RCoA website, and...
