The neuro-spines fellowship was a fantastic opportunity to which I would highly recommend applying. The fellowship was entirely tailored to my interests, I was allowed complete freedom to pick the ratio of neuro to spines and adult to paediatric. Within spines I focussed heavily on major spinal deformity work in adolescent and degenerative populations. In neuro I garnered significant exposure to awake craniotomies, posterior fossa surgery and navigated cases. The fellowship is also nicely complemented by being on the second on call rota at QMC and therefore there is also exposure to emergency neuro and spines cases.

The breadth of these subspecialties is incredible, I rapidly improved my understanding and ability with depth of anaesthesia monitoring, neurophysiological monitoring, difficult airways, massive blood loss and TEG. By the end of the fellowship my confidence with elective and emergency neurosurgical and spinal cases had significantly improved and I was performing major elective and emergency cases independently.

Further to the excellent clinical experience I became a member of the spines ‘Theatre Improvement Group’ (TIG) which is an MDT group that met monthly to try and improve safety and efficiency. This was a great resource and led to high quality QI projects and presentations. Involvement with the spines TIG also gave me a better understanding of how consultant surgeons, anaesthetists, theatre teams and management all interact to produce elective pathways. As a team we undertook a lot of work improving and refining these.

All of these skills mentioned are transferable to other areas and provide excellent experience for interviews for consultant anaesthetic posts.

Should any applicant be keen to discuss further, please don’t hesitate to email me at kevin.odonoghue@doctors.org.uk

Projects/Publications during Fellowship:

‘Cell saver use in QMC theatres’, in progress May 2020
Chose topic, led and managed project using a recently published guideline as a standard

‘Improving the team debrief’ Postponed April 2020
Led and managed multiple monthly PDSA cycles over 12 months, systematic change

Oral, national presentation, ‘BritSpine’ Glasgow – Postponed: COVID-19

‘Patient blood management for major spinal surgery’ Jan 2020
Evidence based retrospective analysis of six months of practice

National poster presentation Association of Anaesthetists Winter Scientific Meeting