Principles and Practices of Anaesthesia

Develop your skills in the field of anaesthesia with our Principles and Practices of Anaesthesia module. It's been designed for post-registration nurses to cover the basic principles of anaesthesia and relevant pharmacology, and forms part of your continuing professional development.

Combined with our Care of the Patient Undergoing Anaesthesia module, this short course will ultimately allow you to work in anaesthetics in your department.

It provides an opportunity for those of you who are employed in operating departments to achieve the basic knowledge required to function as a member of the anaesthetic team, while taking into account the broader issues of physics, environmental factors and legal and ethical issues. It also provides an introduction to anaesthetics and will act as the foundation, to be built upon in more depth when you progress to our next anaesthetic module.

You'll gain the knowledge, skills and experience to recognise, communicate and respond competently, with care and compassion, when a patient's clinical condition indicates that they are becoming acutely unwell. You’ll explore how psychological wellbeing can impact on recovery and the importance of patient-focused care and empowerment (Francis, 2013; NHS Constitution, 2012). And finally, you’ll peer-assess technical and non-technical skills (caring, compassion, communication, team working, decision making and situation awareness) during the scenarios.