Guest Speakers Biography

SESSION 1 “Child Care”

Dr Anthony Bradley

Consultant Paediatric Anaesthetist, Bristol Royal Hospital for Children. Governance lead, Airway lead, WATCh retrieval consultant.

Special interests include ENT and Spinal. Enthusiast of Regional and TIVA.

Product of the Peninsula Deanery. Lover of the Southwest, especially the Scilly Isles. Once surfer, then cyclist, now runner (for convenience). Christian, Husband, and Father. Happiest on campervan adventures with my wife and daughter.

Dr Rob Conway

Consultant Anaesthetist, Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS FT

Rob is a consultant anaesthetist here in North Devon and is the current Clinical Lead and Paediatric Anaesthetic Lead. He spends his time between shipping kids around North Devon and Saunton Beach where he can be often spotted on his long board. 

SESSION 2 Sustainability Update

Dr Pete Ford

Consultant Anaesthetist, Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS FT

Chief of staff and theme lead for Sustainability for Exeter's NIHR Healthtech research centre 2024. Multiple department roles including airway and procurement lead for over a decade. Clinical Director for Business Innovation and Sustainability 2019 to 2024. Winner of the 2023 National HSJ Towards Net Zero Award. Finalist for the Sustainability hero and clinical categories at the National NHS Sustainability Partnership Awards 2023 and finalist at the Exeter Sustainability awards 2023.

Dr Richard Hixson

Critical Care Consultant, Healthcare Ocean

Consultant in Critical Care Medicine, Physician Environmentalist, Member of the UK Ocean Decade Committee, and co-founder of Healthcare Ocean. Richard’s interest is Global Goal 14, Life Below Water and he works with healthcare providers, supplier industries and NGOs to improve the health of the ocean ecosystem.

SESSION 3 Advanced Monitoring

Dr Grant Rodney

Consultant Anaesthetist, Dundee, NHS Tayside.  

Anaesthesia interests: airway, paediatrics, TIVA and advanced monitoring, developing world.  Lifelong ‘twitcher’, campaigner for routine quantitative neuromuscular monitoring, member of Association working party for Standards of monitoring (2015 and 2021).  Passionate about the need for personalised anaesthesia delivery based on individual patient needs, enhancing clinical care and delivering patient outcome benefits."

Dr Mark Barley

Consultant Anaesthetist, Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust

Mark is a Consultant Anaesthetist at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust where he is both the equipment and airway leads. His clinical interests are anaesthesia for major head and neck surgery, upper GI and emergency surgery. As the Honorary Secretary of SIVA (the Society For Intravenous Anaesthesia) he is duty bound to be a TIVA DIVA. He’s a keen advocate of processed EEG for all patients receiving general anaesthesia and has delivered lectures and workshops regarding pEEG at both national and international conferences. When not lugging multiple pEEG, nociceptive and neuromuscular monitors around Nottinghamshire he’s trying to out-run and out-cycle middle age to maintain his brain health.

Dr Peter Klepsch

Consultant Anaesthetist North Bristol NHS Trust

Peter has been a consultant anaesthetist at Frenchay Hospital and Southmead Hospital since 2005, when he moved to the UK after finishing medical school and specialist training in Berlin. He does a lot of flexible work, but has a long standing interest in Neurosurgery, Bariatric surgery, Plastic surgery and Cancer surgery in general.

Over the last 19 years he has tried to create an interest in TIVA amongst his colleagues and has promoted the use of neuromuscular monitoring and processed EEG monitoring. He has taught on this topics at local, national and international meetings.

Outside work he is a keen skier, cyclist, surfer and basketball player.

SESSION 4 Sir Humphry Davy Lecture

Connor Roe MBE

Cave Explorer & Cave Rescue Diver

Connor was a member of the international team of cave divers, whom successfully rescued 12 boys

and their coach from the Tham Luang Cave in Thailand in July 2018. Cave exploration is one of the few remaining frontiers of physical exploration remaining in our highly inter-connected world. It is not possible to know what is around the corner without shining your own light upon it and in some cases, bringing light to that place for the very first time. Every cave presents its own challenges, requiring a unique approach, building on previous experiences and knowledge. The collaborative ethos required for success is seen in the use of pioneering techniques, customised equipment and massive amounts of camaraderie.

Connor Roe MBE was exposed to caving and exploration before he could walk. With a family history in cave exploration, it was inevitable he would follow in his family’s footsteps. Wishing to push his passion for cave exploration further, he knew that learning to cave dive was the next step. Diagnosed with ADHD as a child, learning in a classroom was never his strength as his

teachers commented that he had ‘so much potential, if only he was focused’. With cave diving he found no shortage of focus, and had finally found his place of calm. His experience and knowledge developed over the years, particularly within remote and challenging cave networks. In 2018, he utilised these skills during the rescue of 12 boys and their coach in the Tham Luang Cave in Thailand. 

Cave rescue is a complex and often prolonged event, taking place over hours and days rather than minutes. The Tham Luang Cave rescue required a totally unique approach, developing systems from the ground up. The methods used had never previously been attempted, and the likelihood of multiple fatalities was all-but certain. It required the team to pull off an extraordinary rescue, most considered to be impossible.

SESSION 5 ‘When It Goes Wrong’

Dr John Tansley

Clinical Director for Patient Safety Sherwood Forest Hospitals NHS FT

Following a career as a consultant anaesthetist which incorporated a number of non-clinical quality and safety roles I have been working full-time in safety for over 5 years. Healthcare is one of the worlds most complex sociotechnical systems and there is a significant knowledge and skills gap in systems thinking and the understanding of complexity which results in an understanding of how work works that is superficial at best.

I am experienced in a variety of investigation methodologies including RCA, NCAS investigation and have completed RCPath Medical Examiner training. I spent a year seconded to the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB, now HSSIB and MNSI) working full time as an investigator. HSIB was a world-first organisation established to improve patient safety through effective and independent investigations and has pioneered the professionalisation of healthcare safety investigation. This experience has proved invaluable in our transition to PSIRF with its emphasis on patient engagement, human factors, systems thinking and a just culture. In addition to my NHS roles I have been part of the Scientific Advisory Group for the EU SAFEST study.

I am fascinated by many aspects human performance and have learned a lot from training and coaching in triathlon and ultra running.

Dr Gareth Greenslade

Consultant in Anaesthesia and Pain Medicine, UHBW (Weston)

I started as a consultant anaesthetist at Frenchay Hospital in 1997. I specialised in pain medicine and neuroanaesthesia, with a special interest in difficult airways.

As a trainee I had noticed that awake flexible bronchoscopies were more difficult when patients had not received their opioid premed. When remifentanil came along, I wondered whether it could be used to assist awake fibreoptic intubations. I was anaesthetising for the “knackered necks list” every Thursday with Ciaran Bolger the spinal neurosurgeon—now a professor in Dublin—it did not take long to gather a number of cases. I presented the positive results at the 1998 Difficult Airway Society meeting in Belfast.

A lawyer from Somerset asked me to look at the case of a young, chartered accountant who had emerged from a routine emergency anaesthetic, so brain damaged that she now needed help to dress. A London-based expert had deemed her care to have been adequate, but the lawyer had his doubts. I dug into the notes and found clear evidence of negligence: extubation of a patient with a full stomach whilst still partially anaesthetised/reversed and then a failure to reintubate until the arterial pH was down to 6.9. The Defendant’s expert was a professor of anaesthesia who edited a standard textbook. He declared the patient’s care to be faultless. Sleepless nights ensued until I read his chapter on anaesthesia for emergency surgery. This stated the exact opposite of what he had written in his report. When this was pointed out to the Defendant’s legal team, a seven-figure out of Court settlement was arranged to pay for the patient’s need for lifelong care. This early success piqued my interest in the medicolegal arena.

Before starting at medical school, I worked for the London Ambulance Service on frontline ambulances and developed an interest in pre-hospital work. Joining the Royal Navy allowed me to get more out of hospital experience. During the Tanker War in 1987-88 I looked after mine clearance divers and decompressed the occasional American sports diver. The knowledge around mechanisms of injury that I gained in the ambulance service and in the navy has been valuable when reporting on persistent pain after accidents.

I left the navy after the first Gulf War and made my way to Bristol, where I completed my anaesthetics training and have been doing pain, anaesthetics, and medicolegal work ever since.

SESSION 6 Airway Matters

Professor Cyprian Mendonca

Consultant Anaesthetist University Hospitals Coventry & Warwickshire NHS Trust

Honorary Professor, University of Warwick.

President of Society for Education in Anaesthesia (SEA UK).

Special interests include head & neck anaesthesia, airway management, neuroanaesthesia, human factors and medical education. He is the academic lead for core clinical education, course director for human factors and airway training courses at Coventry. He has co-authored seven books in anaesthesia and written chapters in the anaestheisa textbooks. He has published a series of peer reviewed papers in advanced airway management and education.

He was awarded President’s commendation certificate from Royal College of Anaesthetists in 2016 and 2021, Featherstone Professor from Association of Anaesthetists (2016-18), and DAS Professor of Annaesthesia and Airway management in 2022 for his sustained contribution to education, airway management and research in Anaesthesia.

SESSION 7 Personal Performance

Nick Masson

Managing Director Bigwave Growth Ltd

B.Ed Honours in Physical Education

Member of the Chartered Institute for the Management of Sport and Physical Activity (CIMSPA) – Board Member 2016 - 22

‘How Wellbeing and happiness are linked to performance and productivity in organisations’

I am a business growth specialist working predominantly in the leisure trust, private and public sectors helping organisations, teams and individuals realise their full potential. This requires them stepping outside their comfort zones and improving their performance across a wide range of skills including financial performances in some cases by several millions of pounds.

I spent the first few years of my working life on a golf course before realising that there needed to be more to work than playing golf so did a B.Ed Honours in Physical Education at Exeter University. I moved through the ranks of Management to Contract Management before working as National Partnership Manager for DC Leisure at the time the largest leisure management company in the UK.I then had 16 years as Commercial Director of Bigwave Media a marketing and business growth organisation before setting up Bigwave Growth Ltd in August 2021 as Managing Director and lead consultant.

SESSION 8 Perioperative Medicine

Dr Adam Brayne

University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust

South West Anaesthesia Research Matrix (SWARM) Research Fellow

The SWARM model is a trainee-led audit and research collaborative that aims to act as an altruistic group that conducts high-quality, high-impact, multi-centered research and audit for the benefit of patients and their future care.

Dr Helen Anderson

Consultant Anaesthetist and Perioperative Physician, University Hospitals Plymouth.

Helen trained in anaesthesia in the North East and worked as a Consultant Anaesthetist at Freeman Hospital, Newcastle upon Tyne NHS Trust from 2007-2013. She has been involved in Cardiopulmonary Exercise Testing (CPET) and pre-operative assessment since 2005. In 2013, she moved to the warmer (but wetter) climes of Cornwall and is currently the lead for Pre-operative Assessment and Perioperative Medicine in Plymouth where the service has continued to expand and has developed into a multimodal prehabilitation service to optimise patients in the perioperative period. She is the Honorary Secretary for the International Prehab and Perioperative Testing  Society (iPOETTS) which has been involved in setting standards, training and research proposals in this field. Since 2023 she has been the Peri-operative Medicine (POM) Lead for the Devon ICS as part of the NHSE POM Network. Outside of work can be found wearing a dry robe in an appropriate setting (sea swimming), sailing or skiing. 

Dr Tom Teare

Consultant Anaesthetist, Musgrove Park Hospital, Taunton

Clinical Lead for Perioperative Medicine in Somerset Integrated Care System

Tom did his anaesthetic training across the Southwest with a perioperative fellowship in Western Australia. His interests include anaesthesia for major abdominal surgery, pre-operative assessment, shared decision-making for high-risk patients and postgraduate education.

He has been involved in the development of a patient-centred perioperative medicine system for the last four years. Somerset Foundation Trust is one of the first in the UK to roll out pre-screening and optimisation of patients as soon as they are listed for surgery. He believes that the greatest improvement for surgical patients in the next ten years are to be found outside the operating theatre.

Out of work, he will be found on a bike, on a boat, in a greenhouse or making conversation with the world’s stupidest labrador.