Past Presidents

As President for 2 years from 26 October 2022, I have had an opportunity to warmly welcome you in person to one or more of our 12 combined educational meetings over this period. If you’re a regular attender then you know the score, but if not then please know that these events will encompass topics relevant to the day-to-day practice of Anaesthesia, and sometimes Intensive Care or Pain Medicine. There is potentially > 8 CPD points per year if you’re a Gold Star attender or under the annual appraisal microscope! After a period of remote / Zoom type meetings during the height of Covid 19, we have now transitioned back to face-to-face CPD meetings.

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Anaesthesia Trainees in Merseyside, do you know that you have automatic free membership of the LSA? There is an annual modest membership subscription of £50 for non-trainee paying members which very much helps the aims of the LSA. BUT you do NOT need to be a paid-up member to attend or to bring a guest along to some meetings or to ask searching questions of speakers from the position of the back benches! But it does help (e.g. catering) to know that you’re likely to attend so please click on meeting links and register whenever likely, or simply just turn up. So, this is an open invitation on behalf of the LSA Committee. However, half or full day CPD meetings will come with a modest but cost-effective price tag. Whether you are an interested Medical Student or Foundation Doctor, a CT1 - ST7 trainee, a retired or practicing SAS to consultant grade anaesthetist, all of you are very welcome and we look forwards to seeing you during the year.

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The LSA is in its pre-centenary decade. Over those years it has seen attendance at its meetings by many thousands of anaesthetists working or retired in the Liverpool, Cheshire and North Wales areas. Some have been noted luminaries in the specialty. I can make no such claim. But I have been honoured as an LSA President to represent the Committee, the membership and the many countless hard-working anaesthetists who support the foundations of so much that occurs in the hospital setting. A graduate of Trinity College Dublin (1985), I became one amongst those many thousands of LSA attendees when in 1992 I started ‘a Registrar Rotation’ in ‘The Royal’. I recall being there for a whole month before I rotated onwards! I’m still working full-time, for now anyway, at the Countess of Chester Hospital. My clinical interests are TIVA, Anaesthesia for Vascular Surgery, Orthopaedic trauma surgery, and an expired interest in Intensive Care Medicine. Attending LSA meetings since 1992 became a regular and enjoyable focus for me. Trainee membership was free then too. I recall the relaxed educational and social forum, excellent speakers presenting on contemporaneous topics, seeing who was getting up to what in the Trainees Prize meeting, as well as catching up with past or present colleagues of all grades. Not to mention hearing about difficult cases, about different times, or seeing the embrace of older & newer knowledge in discussions with retired anaesthetists. I even got some ideas for the home kitchen from the hot suppers! I needed the help!

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Challenges in any time period are numerous and continue to evolve. Life and work were busy then and continue to be so in the 2020’s.  We work in larger and larger anaesthetic departments, in an increasingly technical specialty and see past colleagues less frequently. Changing national guidelines and standards of quality, greater expectations from patients as well as surgical colleagues against the background of an increasingly comorbid population, greater legal and regulatory accountability, new IT systems or moving into new hospitals, on the day preop assessments, preoperative safety briefing deadlines, electronic patient care documentation and anaesthetic charts, simulation & human factors scenario training, catastrophe training, annual appraisal, the effects of the pandemic… These are all tied into a much greater focus on a better work/ life balance against the backdrop of a pressurised healthcare workplace.

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I believe that the LSA continues to have an important role in balancing the overlapping priorities of the professional and the personal. It provides a local cost-effective forum for continued education in Anaesthesia in a more social and discursive setting, away from the snatched lunch conversations and pressures of work. If you bring yourself along, sometimes a guest or partner too … then, beyond the CPD points, you may find some holistic benefit to yourself as a past, current or future anaesthetist, as a doctor or simply in individual wellbeing. As well as a hot lunch or supper too!

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Patrick (‘Pat’) Mullen, 30 October 2022
patrickmullen@nhs.net

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