The man behind the mask: A life in anaesthesia and critical care
My medical career lasted forty years. The first six of those years were spent at medical school, the rest working on the NHS frontline as a hospital doctor. I don't doctor anymore. I write. I hope you enjoy reading what I have to say. If you want to know why I bothered, please read my blog!
The man behind the mask: A life in anaesthesia and critical care
My medical career lasted forty years. The first six of those years were spent at medical school, the rest working on the NHS frontline as a hospital doctor. I don't doctor anymore. I write. I hope you enjoy reading what I have to say. If you want to know why I bothered, please read my blog!
Tony plans to save the world one patient at a time, but first, he has to survive the training.
Tony McCluskey is brimming with youthful vigour and enthusiasm at the start of a six-year training programme to fight death and disease on the NHS frontline. Even though his first patient is already dead, there's a lot Tony can learn from somebody with...
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Getting your patients under is an art. Bringing them back safely again is a bloody miracle.
Tony sets out on his career as an anaesthetist and soon discovers that getting his patients off to sleep and keeping them asleep until their operations are over is easier said than done. Waking them up safely afterwards with no ill effects is even harder....
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“The buck stops here” isn’t just a metaphor for an NHS consultant – it’s a cardiac monitor flatlining and you're the person who will have to tell his wife.
After years serving in the trenches on the NHS frontline, Tony has been transferred to staff headquarters as a consultant anaesthetist with a special interest in the care of critically ill...
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‘He’s suffering so much. Please do something, doctor. You wouldn’t treat a dog like this.’
This post and the next deal with the sensitive subject of terminal illness, dying, assisted dying and euthanasia. It is necessarily emotive, and some readers might find it distressing. Please don’t continue if you think you might be affected.
Few subjects generate stronger opinions than euthanasia, assisted dying and limiting patients’ access to medical and...
If reading this post doesn’t give you a headache, you weren’t concentrating hard enough.
I once anaesthetised a man for a total knee replacement. Mark wasn’t the fittest guy in the world. He was an obese, lifelong smoker with COPD who was breathless on gentle exertion. He also suffered from constant agonising knee pain that kept him awake at night and generally made his life miserable. His orthopaedic consultant told him a total knee...
We are all for informed consent, aren’t we? Of course we are. It’s a bit like asking if we’re all in favour of an NHS that isn’t crumbling around us, a government that actually delivers on its election promises or a big win on the National Lottery. All I would say is, be careful what you wish for. While informed consent is an excellent goal to aspire to, it’s not as easy to give or receive as it sounds.
Several factors hinder the process. The information exchange involved is...
Doctors, Nurses, Patients and Hearses
An NHS consultant's guide to how hospitals work, who's who on the wards, and understanding common acute medical conditions.