Rachel Yeager

Blogs

These are blog items written, or ghostwritten, by me for the Royal College of Anaesthetist's internal blog, targeted at current College members.

The Royal College of Anaesthetists •

Introducing the updated Green Theatre Checklist

As a College, our efforts to promote and support sustainability in anaesthetic practice benefit from working collaboratively. The new updated Green Theatre Checklist is a great example of how a multidisciplinary and intercollegiate approach can lead to tangible improvements.  
We’ve worked with the UK and Ireland Surgical Colleges, the Association of Anaesthetists and the Association for Perioperative Practice to update the Checklist, first launched in 2022, which provides all members of the sur...
The Royal College of Anaesthetists •

My experience of perioperative cardiac arrest

My cardiac arrest happened at 4.56pm on Friday 1 September 2017, during an operation to remove an abscess in my left breast/chest. I had been terribly ill for three months due to the initial unknown cause, but otherwise I was a healthy thirty-something, and the proud mother of a new baby.
It had been a really difficult time, involving multiple rushes to A&E (several hospitals) and admissions, with extensive tests investigating everything from suspected blood clots on my lungs to abscesses on my...
The Royal College of Anaesthetists •

What we would tell our colleagues about SNAP3

As Chief Investigator and Lead for the RCoA’s Sprint National Anaesthesia Project on frailty and multimorbidity (SNAP3), we were proud to see our outcomes paper published in the British Journal of Anaesthesia last month. Since then, we and our colleagues have taken every opportunity to share our findings with peers across the country, including at Anaesthesia 2025. 
One question keeps surfacing - a familiar one to anyone involved in research: how do we move from evidence to meaningful clinical c...
The Royal College of Anaesthetists •

10 questions with LGBTQ+ advocate, Dr Duncan McGregor

Yes, thank you. My name is Dr Duncan McGregor and I’m an anaesthetic trainee working in Greater Manchester.
GLADD is the UK’s only organisation for LGBTQ+ doctors, dentists, and medical students. We’re a non-profit organisation. The work we undertake broadly falls into three categories: education, activism, and networking.
In my early years of medical school, an email fell into my inbox about a conference for LGBTQ+ medical students and that’s when I first heard about GLADD. I went along to the...
The Royal College of Anaesthetists •

7 questions with LGBTQ+ advocate, Dr Luke Flower

I’m an intensive care medicine registrar with an anaesthetic background and a PhD student at the Victor Phillip Dahdaleh Heart & Lung Research Institute at the University of Cambridge, where my research focuses on immune dysregulation in acute respiratory distress syndrome. 
I also have an interest in healthcare inequalities and, over recent years, have worked with colleagues from across the UK and globally to try to improve the care of LGBTQ+ patients. I was fortunate to join the Intensive Care...
The Royal College of Anaesthetists •

A glimpse behind the curtain: from pilot to progress

When the Royal College of Anaesthetists (RCoA) invited volunteers to participate in the pilot of its new Clinical Performance Examination (CPE), I signed up—part curiosity, part a sense of academic adventure. What followed was an insightful journey into the evolving landscape of anaesthetic assessment. 
As part of an ongoing evolution driven by both internal and external reviews, the Final FRCA is undergoing significant transformation. By 2027, the traditional SOE will be replaced with the CPE:...
The Royal College of Anaesthetists •

The strength of our communities

For Black History Month, Dr Rochelle Pierre spoke with our Media and Communications Officer Rachel Yeager, about the importance of community.  
Dr Rochelle Pierre describes herself as “quite a late bloomer;” which you would never think seeing the woman who is now an anaesthetist and charity founder, not to mention part-time DJ, and basketball hooper. But at one point Dr Pierre was much more focused on her jump-shot than her airway management:
“When I was younger, I wanted to play basketball prof...
The Royal College of Anaesthetists •

Confidence and calm

For Black History Month, Dr Thungo Kuwani spoke with our Media and Communications Officer Rachel Yeager, about confidence and calm as a black female anaesthetist.
Dr Thungo Kuwani knows that her superpower is being Thungo Kuwani.
All of her: The black, female, consultant anaesthetist. The little girl from Zambia who originally dreamt of being an astronaut. The daughter of her mother and father, now mother to her own children. Dr Kuwani knows who she is and isn’t afraid to be herself.
“I am very...