Senior OUH anaesthetist wins top award

A senior Oxford University Hospitals clinician, Professor Jaideep Pandit, has been awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal College of Anaesthetists.

The award, the institution's highest award, recognises sustained service to the specialty of anaesthesia at the highest level. In Professor Pandit's case the medal recognises his achievements in research, nationally and internationally.

Professor Pandit, OUH's Clinical Director for Theatres, is the first Oxford professor of anaesthesia to receive the rarely awarded Gold Medal in 20 years.

He has published widely in fields as diverse as respiratory physiology and difficult airway management; cardiovascular physiology and vascular anaesthesia; operating theatre management; neuroscience and pharmacology.

In particular, Professor Pandit led the largest-ever study on 'accidental awareness during surgery', making recommendations that have changed practice and reduced the incidence of this much-feared complication of anaesthesia.

Using techniques of electrophysiology, he and colleagues discovered that the effects of common anaesthetics can 'antagonise' each other at single channel level, rather than acting cumulatively to achieve the same effect. This discovery raises the possibility that novel mechanisms of actions are responsible for the anaesthetic effect.

Professor Pandit wrote the Academic Strategy report that laid the foundations for the National Institute of Academic Anaesthesia and for academic training pathways. Recently, as Chair of the Safe Anaesthesia Liaison Group he led numerous patient safety developments and co-wrote key national guidelines for clinical practice in monitoring and preventing Never Events and other complications.