Each unit should have a designated clinical lead (see glossary) anaesthetist for thoracic anaesthetic services. This should be recognised in their job plan and they should be involved in multidisciplinary service planning and governance within the unit.
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...
Head and neck surgery provides an excellent opportunity for the formal and systematic training of anaesthetists in the use of advanced methods for airway management and the shared airway, including videolaryngoscopy, fibreoptic intubation, and jet and apnoeic oxygenation techniques. Where possible, additional equipment such as monitors, video recorders and airway simulators should be made available to facilitate this important aspect...
Anaesthesia for all patients undergoing major vascular surgery should be provided by or directly supervised by an anaesthetist suitably qualified, trained and experienced in vascular anaesthesia. This will usually be a consultant vascular anaesthetist, who has overall responsibility for the patient’s care. Under certain circumstances, this could be an SAS doctor who is practising regularly in this subspecialist area under...
The duty anaesthetist should have an effective and rapid means of communication with their supervisor at all times.23 Staff working in the maternity unit should be aware of their supervisor’s identity, location and how to contact them. The name(s) of the autonomously practising anaesthetist(s) covering the delivery suite and how to contact them should be clearly displayed and easily...
Access for preoperative assessment staff to multidisciplinary teams support from other physicians, medical specialists, anaesthetists, surgeons and pain management teams should be available.12
The anaesthetist should have a competent trained assistant immediately available for the duration of any anaesthetic intervention and this practitioner should not have any other duties.33
Autonomously practising anaesthetists and intensivists should be involved in the planning of local trauma services. Those with defined responsibility for major trauma management should be engaged in the layout and logistics of the resuscitation room, interventional radiology and theatres suites.
