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The John Radcliffe Women’s Centre has an annual delivery rate of nearly 8000. A group of twelve clinicians provide a consultant-led obstetric anaesthesia service. From Monday to Friday there are two Delivery Suite consultant sessions each morning and afternoon and a daily elective caesarean section list. Additional consultant sessions cover the weekly high-risk clinic, the cardiac antenatal clinic and pre-caesarean section assessment clinics.
The Delivery Suite is staffed by a dedicated anaesthetic trainee out-of-hours and there is a separate consultant on-call rota for obstetric anaesthesia. Currently, the caesarean section rate is approximately 25% and over 40% of women choose neuraxial analgesia in labour. The large amount of clinical material provides excellent opportunities for research, audit teaching and training.
The Oxford unit is a regional referral centre for high-risk and complicated pregnancy and has an international reputation for the management of hypertension. The unit is also a referral centre for the management of cases of abnormally invasive placenta. A multidisciplinary approach to management of all high-risk cases is encouraged and there are therefore many requests for antenatal anaesthetic assessment. There is a weekly multidisciplinary meeting for discussion of high-risk cases. Each month there is an obstetric anaesthetic governance meeting at which interesting cases are presented.
All first year specialist registrars in Oxford are allocated to a three-month unit of modular training in obstetric anaesthesia. In addition, senior trainees in the Oxford Deanery may apply for a six-month advanced training module in obstetric anaesthesia. In addition, there are a number of Fellowship posts available. Successful applicants join the resident rota and are encouraged to take an active role in teaching, research, audit and quality improvement projects and management.
Dr Desi Choi
Head of Obstetric Anaesthesia Email: desi.choi@ouh.nhs.uk