The Department of Anaesthesia and Perioperative Medicine comprises 75 Consultants, 4 Associate Specialists 6 Anaesthesia Associates and an allocation of 12 CT1-2 and 23 ST3-7 doctors from the North Central School of Anaesthesia, all supported by an administrative and management team, delivering anaesthesia for over 400 programmed service activities each week.

Our clinical work across three sites is varied and includes thoracic surgery, obstetrics, inpatient and day-case surgery, chronic and acute pain, pre-assessment and exercise testing, imaging, endoscopy and radiotherapy. Much of this work has seen a large growth in the past five years.

 The department has three core aims:

  • Excellence in clinical care 
  • The highest standards of Education & Training 
  • World Class Research. 
     

Patient contact

Other contact information

Divisional Clinical Director – Dr Viki Mitchell
Email: viki.mitchell@nhs.net
Telephone: 020 3447 3361
 

Divisional Manager – Oscar Fernandez-Saborit
Email: oscar.fernandez-saborit@nhs.net
Telephone: 020 3447 3357
 

Matron – Alvaro Tabora
Email: alvaro.tabora@nhs.net
Telephone: 020 3447 3347
 

Clinical Lead – Dr James Holding
Email: james.holding@nhs.net 
Telephone: 020 3447 3362
 

General Manager - Maj Mutch
Email: maj.mutch@nhs.net
Telephone: 020 3447 3348

Address

Anaesthesia and Perioperative Medicine
University College Hospital
3rd Floor Podium
235 Euston Road
London, NW1 2BU
 

GP contact

High quality clinical care is our priority. As an acute speciality dealing with situations that can quickly change, our focus is patient safety, being clinically effective and ensuring that patients experience of anaesthesia is as pleasant as possible. We see everyone before surgery so that our patients have a chance to discuss their anaesthetic. Our consultant-led emergency and obstetric theatres ensure that patients needing urgent surgery get the highest quality care. There is always a ‘duty consultant Anaesthetist’ available to help with planning care, challenging cases and to organize the anaesthetic team to meet the demands of the day.

The department has a strong tradition of excellence in education. A number of our consultants are examiners at the Royal College of Anaesthetists we also run a number of local, national and international meetings and courses. Because we recognize that medicine never stands still we are committed to developing our institution as a centre of excellence with regard to teaching and training including high fidelity simulator based training.

Our anaesthetic trainees come from the ‘Central School of Anaesthesia’ and are supervised whilst consultants completing modules in a variety of clinical areas. They range from foundation year trainees to experienced fellows gaining expertise in specialist areas at the end of their training. We have a weekly departmental meeting (Friday 8am), teaching sessions and research presentations.

Our department is recognised as consistently being in the top 5 performing academic anaesthesia departments in the UK and the successful candidate would be expected to take a full supportive role in research activity. We have two newly appointed Professors of Perioperative Medicine (Ramani Moonesinghe) and Perioperative Education (David Walker), several senior lecturers and internationally renowned expertise in designing and delivering practice-changing clinical trials, data science and innovation-based research. Clinical research is supported through our relationship with the UCL Division of Surgery and the UCLH Biomedical Research Centre. Innovation is supported through collaboration with the Bloomsbury Innovation Group (BIG) community interest company. Clinical academics supervising research in the department include Dr Brigitta Brander (Pain medicine), Dr Sim West (innovation), Dr Sam Bampoe (clinical trials), Dr Steve Harris (data science), and Professor Ramani Moonesinghe (perioperative epidemiology and data science, innovation, clinical trials and mixed methods research).

Weekly research meetings led by Professor Moonesinghe are held in the University to which all clinicians are invited, as well as monthly in the clinical department. The aim of the research department is to involve all UCH anaesthetists in health services research in perioperative care. We are the principal academic partner of the Health Services Research Centre at the Royal College of Anaesthetists (NIAA-HSRC; www.niaa-hsrc.org.uk) and UCL hosts most HSRC research fellows. Examples of recent activity involving SOuRCe / UCLH research fellows leading national / international research and improvement projects include: the development and validation of the Surgical Outcome Risk Tool (collaborative work with NCEPOD – www.sortsurgery.com), development of the PRISM (PeriopeRative Improvement Science and Management) website which includes a training resource for Quality Improvement based on the RCoA curriculum (www.prism-ed.com), the national Perioperative Quality Improvement Programme (www.pqip.org.uk); the Sprint National Anaesthesia Projects (SNAP-1 and SNAP-2); and the National Emergency Laparotomy Audit (www.nela.org.uk).

UCL/UCLH has developed a highly innovative postgraduate education programme in perioperative medicine (POM), led by Professor David Walker and several other consultant members of the clinical department. The POM Masters course recruits 60 students per year and is delivered entirely online; the POM Massive Open Online Course (led by Dr Abigail Whiteman) provides free online education to over one hundred thousand users worldwide; more educational programmes are in planning. All of these educational innovations have included UCH trainees and consultants in their development, delivery and maintenance.

The UCLH/UCL NIHR Comprehensive Biomedical Research Centre was established in 2007 and is at the forefront of world class clinical and experimental medicine research. It forms a key part of the Government’s strategy for research and development in the NHS. Funding for clinical research activity for all consultants is available from the BRC, subject to a competitive application process and annual appraisal, and candidates interested in applying for BRC funding will be mentored by senior academics within the department. More details about the BRC can be found here: http://www.uclhospitals.brc.nihr.ac.uk

Consultants