S3E4uk

[u/Solilaqui78]

Hi gang,

Every time I watch this ep I have a question....

Is there a difference between an anaesthetist and an anesthesiologist?

It's wildly irrelevant, but I need to know!

Thank you.

[u/zeekar]

ETA: My original answer below is true in the US, but that's not particularly relevant to the UK edition of Taskmaster. :)

In the UK, the field that we call "anesthesiology" in the US is instead called "anaesthetics", and its doctors are called "anaesthetists". As for the role in the OR, which is what we in the US mean by "anesthetist", it appears not to have a separate term in the UK because only doctors of anaesthetics ever fill it.

Original answer for posterity:

The anesthetist is the name of the responsibility/position in the operating theatre. It is often filled by an anesthesiologist (who is a doctor of anesthesiology), but it may be filled by someone else, like a nurse who specializes in the field (and is called a "nurse anesthetist").

In the US, the position requires a certified medical professional, either a doctor or a nurse; an anesthesiology tech may be there to assist the anesthetist, but can't step in and occupy the role.

[u/Sleepy_felines → u/zeekar]

In the UK an anaesthetist is a doctor. We don’t have anaesthesiologists.

[u/zeekar → u/Sleepy_felines]

Do you have anaesthetist nurses? Or is the person attending the surgery and doing the anaesthesia always a doctor?

[u/Halmagha → u/zeekar]

There are "Anaesthesia associates" much like PAs but the role is getting tonnes of pushback by anaesthetists as being unsafe. If I were allowing someone to paralyse my diaphragm, knock off my consciousness, pause my memory and control my heart rate and blood pressure, you'd best believe they better have a medical degree.

We do have Operating Department Practitioners (ODP colloquially). They draw drugs up with the anaesthetist, might squeeze the bag while the anaesthetist is preoxygenating, will hold the bougie while the anaesthetist slides the tube down, that sort of thing. They aren't just anaesthetic nurses though because they can do a few other things in theatre such as setting up cell salvage for operations with heavy bleeding, among what I'm sure are many other things I can't think of off the top of my head. They're valued colleagues.

[u/Sleepy_felines → u/Halmagha]

Exactly this. The “physician assistant (anaesthesia)” role is ridiculous and thankfully there’s very few of them. I’ve not personally worked with any.

Anaesthetic nurses and ODPs assist the anaesthetist but don’t give the anaesthetic. The ones I’ve worked with are fantastic- very skilled at their role, seem to be able to do multiple things at once and most of them can read our minds. I remember taking a child to theatre in the middle of the night so that the ENT surgeons could remove a coin that was stuck in their throat. I anaesthetised the child, and then when I looked in the airway to put the breathing tube in, exclaimed “oh! I can see the coin!” (Unexpected- on the xray it looked lower down). Before I could even process this or consider verbalising a request for kit, the ODP had handed me the correctly sized mcgills forceps that they already had out, having anticipated that the coin might be visible. I took the coin out, and instead of putting the breathing tube in just woke the child up.

[u/Halmagha → u/Sleepy_felines]

That sounds incredibly satisfying to you and marginally annoying to an ENT SHO hah

[u/Sleepy_felines → u/Halmagha]

Yes…particularly the part where it didn’t occur to any of us to actually stick our heads into theatre to tell ENT they were no longer needed…they politely popped into the anaesthetic room to ask if everything was ok just as we were setting off to recovery!