Safe anaesthesia practices in a budding institute: How far have we reached?

Abstract

Anaesthesia is a medical speciality that is pertinent to safety of patients who are undergoing surgical procedures. The type of anaesthesia, critical care and pain services is considered as a benchmark of quality of care provided in any tertiary care institute. This is prerequisite in order to provide quality of care based on sound organisation, good clinical practice and adequate communication with other healthcare workers involved. Several important efforts have been undertaken especially in an integrated manner in developing countries, where anaesthesia services are often provided by unqualified personnel at remote places. The principal reasons in the resource poor areas are critical shortage of trained anaesthesia providers. The patient safety plan must provide a systematic, coordinated and continuous approach to the reduction of medical errors. This includes quality of care, development of guidelines, clinical audits, education and training. In addition, importance of other tools like critical incident reporting, use of simulation for training of residents and staffs and use of checklists are also growing. This article highlights the development of department of anaesthesia in a remote location of India and it focuses on the important elements of safe anaesthesia practice, use of advanced model of teaching by the faculty members and how the anaesthesiologist being expert in critical care and airway management have provided par excellence services in the current challenging times of COVID-19 pandemic crisis situation.