From tabloid outcast to breaking endless pink ceilings in the decades since; Professor Andrew Hartle reflects on his incredible 40+ year career for LGBT+ History Month.
Search
We've found 10151 results
Dr James Brunning provides some simple steps that are likely to pay real dividends and help you thrive through the long dark winter months.
Winter can be hard for many of us, with the combination of longer nights, shorter days and the rounds of respiratory infections that come our way.
It can help to think of wellbeing as a balance between restorative and protective activities and those activities that are draining or reinvigorating. These are, of course, different for each of us and so the best person to advise you on what works for you is yourself. That said, there are some simple steps that are likely to pay real dividends and help you thrive through the long dark winter months.
Dr Omar Khan attends the Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia. Due to the combined effects of extreme heat and huge crowds, he considers the responsibility of medical professionals to help when they're just bystanders.
Approximately two million people attend the Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia every year. The journey is obligatory for those who have the physical and financial means, once in a lifetime. The pilgrimage lasts five days and is based in and around the city of Makkah.
The climate is one of a hot desert with day temperatures regularly exceeding 45ºC (113ºF) during the summer. This is made all the tougher with average relative humidity reaching 33%. Pilgrims travel from around the world. They include all ages and backgrounds, and individuals with complex medical conditions.
I was lucky enough to be given the opportunity to attend this year. My journey began like any other pilgrim’s, initially solely focusing on the religious events ahead. The first few days went as planned, with challenging walks, but nothing more than I had physically and mentally prepared for. Things however changed as the days went on and as the weather deteriorated. I cannot emphasise enough the combined effects of extreme heat and huge crowds. Despite an umbrella to keep one out of direct sunlight and copious amounts of water consumption, heat exhaustion is relatively common. I was also soon to learn that heat stroke was becoming dangerously frequent during my time there. As anaesthetists, our challenge is often to keep patients undergoing major surgery warm. As I entered my hotel lobby, my job was to do the opposite and help cool my fellow pilgrims down!
Many of us know that although parenting and training in anaesthesia are compatible, there are many challenges. This article looks at what could be done to address them.
An increasing number of residents are having children during training. While some of you might balk at the idea of combining nappies and sleepless nights with stages 1, 2 and 3 of training, others are very happy to go on this journey of paternal and professional bliss.
Many of us know that although parenting and training in anaesthesia are compatible, there are many challenges. Some of these could be addressed to the benefit of anaesthetists, anaesthetic departments and providers alike.
This galvanised us to run a national survey, looking at the impact of parenting on training in anaesthesia from both the parent and non-parent perspectives. 411 residents responded to the survey, with a higher proportion of respondents being white and heterosexual, and training less than full time. A similar proportion of men and women responded, highlighting how these issues affect everyone. We recognise that this is the opinion of one group, albeit a key stakeholder, in a complex situation.
This article highlights a few of the key findings.
Find out more about our two-year national project in collaboration with THIS Institute to improve the time it takes for patients to have emergency bowel surgery.
The Royal College of Anaesthetists has undertaken a two-year national project in collaboration with The Healthcare Improvement Studies (THIS) Institute to use new approaches to improve the time it takes for patients to have emergency bowel surgery.
The time taken for patients to get to the emergency operating theatre remains a stubborn problem, despite many years of research and national guidance emphasising the importance of prompt surgery to reduce morbidity and mortality.
The diagnostic and treatment pathways are complex – involving clinicians from emergency medicine, anaesthesia, surgery, critical care, radiology, and often other specialties. Patients also require resources like CT scanners and operating theatres that are often in short supply. Thinking about the multiple steps each patient must traverse, it is no surprise that they often don’t get speedy access to the operating theatre.
With new opportunities on the horizon, we intensify our campaign to pressure UK governments into action in 2025.
Two months ago, we published an updated UK State of the Nation report, providing a comprehensive overview of the anaesthetic workforce, retention challenges, and future projections. The NHS urgently needs more anaesthetists.
Increasing demand – driven by factors such as an ageing and growing population – combined with an inadequate supply of anaesthetists due to insufficient training places and poor retention, has exacerbated the shortfall. This gap has grown from around 1,400 anaesthetists in 2020 to 1,900 in 2022 (15% below what is needed to meet demand).
We need to act on this and aim to build on progress from the last few years. Our first State of the Nation report, published in 2022, along with a wider programme of influencing work, helped secure government funding for an additional 70 ST4 anaesthetic training places each year from 2022 to 2024 in England. This helped to reduce the bottleneck between core and higher anaesthetic training, with the number of applications per place dropping from 2.67 in 2021 to 1.64 in 2024. In Wales, six new higher anaesthetic training places were granted in 2023; in Scotland, six new places were granted in 2024. However, many more are needed to address the workforce shortfall.
This article explores shared decision-making, in which patients and clinicians collaborate to make the best evidence-based decision within the context of the patient’s values.
The success of an anaesthetic is traditionally judged by our ability to safely get our patient through an operation. Yet, the more evolving challenge of our specialty is identifying those patients at high risk of postoperative complications where the best course of action may be no surgery at all. A further challenge is that of empowering patients to consider the available evidence to make the best decision for their circumstances.
Shared decision-making, whereby patients and clinicians collaborate to make the best evidence-based decision within the context of the patients’ values, is recognised as a vital component of perioperative care. The benefits of shared decision-making are accepted by NICE and the Centre for Perioperative Care (CPOC), yet evidence suggests we may not be doing it as well as we should. A recent CPOC survey showed that 39% of patients desired more support or information regarding treatment choices. In another study, 14% of patients expressed regret, and said that they would not have had surgery had they understood the risks and alternatives. View the ‘three-talk’ model of shared decision-making suggested by CPOC.
Recently, 78.4% of ChatGPT users reported they would use it for self-diagnosis. This article explores who is responsible should poor advice from AI, lead to patient harm.
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) describes technology that can create new content, including text, images and audio, based on patterns and structures learnt from existing data. Large language models (LLM) are types of generative AI models that are trained on vast amounts of online data and employ natural language processing, designed to mimic human language and communication.
Since the release of ChatGPT 3.5 by OpenAI in November 2022, there has been a significant rise in interest in and development of LLM chatbot technology, which has become increasingly sophisticated. Now other companies, such as Google, have developed LLM AI technology integrated into search engines via plug-ins.
ChatGPT, and other AI chatbots, have not been designed for (or licensed to) provide medical information and advice. Despite ChatGPT usage policies dictating that medical and health advice without review by a qualified professional may significantly impair safety and wellbeing, the policy is not prohibitory. Therefore there’s increasing concern regarding the unregulated ‘off licence’ use by members of the public.
This article introduces the Lifelong Learning Platform team and also looks into some of the wider support and governance around the LLP.
The Lifelong Learning Platform (LLP) continues to experience very high levels of use, with each month typically seeing more than 500,000 unique actions taking place among its user-base – which is approaching 24,500 – and the LLP team usually receives around 800 emails per month. This article introduces the team and also some of the wider support and governance around the LLP.
The LLP team is headed by Esma Doganguzel, Product Manager, and she is supported by Avia Spiers and Tunde Arowojolu, Product Owners, and Chris Kennedy, Revalidation and CPD Co-ordinator. The team blends strategic oversight, development, training, and regulatory expertise, and is committed to supporting and addressing the evolving needs of our users and to improving the LLP in innovative and progressive ways.
This article explores how to make the most of indirect supervision for both anaesthetists in training and trainers alike.
This article explores how to make the most of indirect supervision.
The 2021 curriculum was explicit about having ‘levels of supervision’ embedded within it. These are descriptors of the supervision level the anaesthetist in training (AiT) would require if they were to repeat the same Supervised Learning Event (SLE) immediately after.