https://anaesthesiargh.com/Recent content on anaesthesiarghHugoen-gbTue, 01 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://anaesthesiargh.com/2024/10/how-to-use-shortcodes/Tue, 01 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://anaesthesiargh.com/2024/10/how-to-use-shortcodes/This blog includes several interactive components that work entirely with HTML and CSS—no JavaScript required. Here’s how to use them in your posts. Accordion Accordions are perfect for FAQs or collapsible content sections. They use the native <details> element for accessibility. {{< accordion title="What is anaesthesia?" >}} Content goes here... {{< /accordion >}} What is anaesthesia? Anaesthesia is the practice of making patients unconscious so surgeons can do their thing without anyone screaming.https://anaesthesiargh.com/2024/09/ode-to-the-coffee-machine/Thu, 05 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://anaesthesiargh.com/2024/09/ode-to-the-coffee-machine/The coffee machine in our theatre complex has been broken for three days. Morale has collapsed. Productivity is, somehow, even lower than usual. Grown consultants have been seen wandering the corridors with the vacant stare of the severely under-caffeinated. I’ve come to believe that the coffee machine is the most important piece of equipment in any hospital. More important than the CT scanner. More important than the ventilators. More important, certainly, than whatever that thing is in the corner of the storeroom that nobody has used since 1997 but we can’t throw away because “we might need it.https://anaesthesiargh.com/2024/08/observations-from-preassessment-clinic/Sat, 10 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://anaesthesiargh.com/2024/08/observations-from-preassessment-clinic/I spent Thursday in preassessment clinic, that peculiar purgatory where we attempt to predict whether patients will survive their upcoming surgery based on a fifteen-minute conversation and some blood tests from three months ago. The clinic runs on a simple principle: every patient believes they are “fit and well,” and our job is to gently disabuse them of this notion. “Apart from…” The most dangerous words in preassessment are “apart from.https://anaesthesiargh.com/2024/07/the-brief-that-wasnt/Tue, 02 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://anaesthesiargh.com/2024/07/the-brief-that-wasnt/The WHO Surgical Safety Checklist was introduced to reduce errors and improve communication. A noble goal. In practice, it has become a speed-reading competition in which we all pretend to listen while thinking about lunch. This morning’s briefing went something like this: Me: “Right, shall we do the brief?” Surgeon: already scrubbing “Yes, yes. Mr Smith, seventy-two, right hip, no allergies, nothing interesting.” Me: “Actually, he’s got—” Surgeon: “Standard anaesthetic, shouldn’t take more than an hour.https://anaesthesiargh.com/2024/06/welcome-to-anaesthesiargh/Sat, 15 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://anaesthesiargh.com/2024/06/welcome-to-anaesthesiargh/So here we are. Another medical blog. Another anaesthetist with opinions. You’d think after twenty years of being told to sit down and stop complaining, I’d have learned something. You’d be wrong. I’ve started this blog for the same reason every doctor eventually starts one: the belief, however misguided, that someone out there might actually want to read the ramblings of someone who spends their days ensuring other people stay unconscious while surgeons do whatever it is surgeons do.https://anaesthesiargh.com/about/Mon, 01 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://anaesthesiargh.com/about/I’m an NHS anaesthetist somewhere in the United Kingdom. I’ve been putting people to sleep for longer than I care to admit, and somehow they keep letting me do it. This blog is where I write about the absurdities of modern medicine, the bureaucratic labyrinth of the NHS, the peculiar characters one meets in operating theatres, and occasionally something genuinely useful about anaesthesia. Why “anaesthesiargh”? Because that’s the sound you make when: