Anaesthetics

Guy’s and St Thomas’ Anaesthetic Visiting Professional offers international clinicians exclusive insight and hands-on experience of a multi-disciplinary anaesthetic team working in a busy tertiary surgical and medical centre in London.

Programme aims

The programme is aimed at those who wish to extend their experience within a leading anaesthetic team and who wish to gain an understanding of the way this is practiced and organised within the NHS and how it integrates with patient care pathways.

The programme aims to include:

A Certificate of Attendance will be awarded to visitors upon the end of their programme.


Format

The anaesthesia programme is delivered to rotate through scheduled theatre sessions, pre-assessment clinics, HDU areas and relevant departmental teaching and research. The observer will be nominated a supervisor to coordinate their individual programme and mentor progress each week.


Who can apply

This programme is intended for non-U.K. advanced trainee clinicians at the level of specialist registrar or consultant looking for exposure to a leading NHS anaesthetic team. Visitors can apply primarily for an observership (with no hands-on element) or a practical attachment programme Those wishing to apply for the practical attachment must have GMC registration. You can apply for GMC registration directly through the main GMC website. This is likely to take a considerable time to achieve and should be factored into an attachment application.


Programme duration

It is recommended to undertake a placement of between six weeks to three months for a typical observership Attachments could be form 3 months to one year. The experience can be tailored to the applicants needs from a generic overview of our anaesthetic services to a specialised attachment to one specialised clinical area.


Anaesthetics service

We anaesthetise over 45,000 patients a year across both hospitals, including the Evelina London Children’s Hospital. Our department has a special interest in teaching and training, regional anaesthesia, patient optimisation, intra-operative echocardiography, enhanced recovery and difficult airway skills. We have an active role in the simulation centre.

We cover all surgical specialities with the exception of neurosurgery and liver transplantation.

Areas we support

Adult Surgical Services


Example Timetable

Monday morning

  • Day Surgery – Guy’s Hospital 

Monday afternoon

  • Day Surgery – Guy’s Hospital
  • Cardiac – St Thomas’ Hospital

Tuesday morning

  • Project Work 

Tuesday afternoon

  • Teaching Session

Wednesday morning

  • Day Surgery – St Thomas’ Hospital 

Wednesday afternoon

  • Day Surgery – St Thomas’ Hospital
  • Pre-Assessment

Thursday morning

  • Priority – St Thomas’ Hospital 

Thursday afternoon

  • Priority – St Thomas’ Hospital 
  • Thoracics – Guy’s Hospital

Friday morning

  • N/A

Friday afternoon

  • N/A

Fees

A course fee per week will be applied; this fee excludes accommodation and travelling expenses. To find out the fee amount please email vpp@gstt.nhs.uk.


Please note

Clinicians are able to offer bursaries or discounted placements on an individual basis. This is at the discretion of the Directorates of GSTT and does not affect the terms and conditions of the Visiting Professional Programme agreements.

Start your application

Why Anaesthetics?

Visiting Professional Gustavo Saraiva talks about his observership placement at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Anaesthesia department

I’ve learned a lot of about anaesthesia and how different things can work in a different departments.

It’s quite nice because you know anaesthesia can be done in many different ways and then you have the experience to expand the way the people do it and having in touch with expert professionals even with great names here in UK it’s been really nice.

So in Brazil it’s quite short period of time training, it’s just three years, and then when I finished I was wondering what to do next.

I thought could be a nice opportunity to expand my knowledge and maybe learning more.

So then I decided to come to UK because I heard a lot of good stuff and they have a lot of publishing and studies, research here, so many things happening, and they have a really nice training programme.

So then I felt could be a nice opportunity to come.

I mean, I had one friend, close friend, she had done a programme here.

She quite strongly recommend me and she said good things and then I started my searching about these hospitals and this Trust and I found really good articles and recommendations in general.

[You] definitely should come it’s amazing experience everybody is really friendly.

I have been learning a lot since I arrived.

I mean, it’s the biggest and the most important experience in my whole professional career.

Oh maybe I should say life changing, expanding my knowledge and my skills and opportunity to learn about culture in general.

Visiting Professional Programme attendee

I had so much of fun learning and building my clinical skills. I am so humbled and inspired

Doctor from India