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Fellowship Group picture with Professor He
Marian and Christina Ionescu Consultant Travelling Fellowship 2017:
The search of oriental pearls of wisdom and friendship I was honoured and privileged to be awarded the Marian and Christina Ionescu Consultant Travelling Fellowship in 2017 by the SCTS to take a team to learn and implement the use of non-intubational techniques in Thoracic Surgery, from one of the high volume centres in China specialising in this approach. Keng Ang, Consultant Thoracic Surgeon, Glenfield Hospital
I
have previously benefited from the SCTS Ethicon Trainee Fellowship where I spent 3 months learning this technique with Professor He, from the First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University. I discovered that it has the potential to benefit some of our patients, and to enhance their recovery. Hence, I wanted to introduce this technique in my centre in a structured manner. I also learnt from my time there, while helping them set up an International course for this technique,
successful delivery of this approach will need the close co-operation between our anaesthetists and theatre staff to get used to some of the technical adjustments required. Therefore, it was important that I engaged all relevant teams (ie. anaesthetists, anaesthetic and theatre ODPs, and my surgical colleagues) early to start this venture. I am extremely grateful to Mr and Dr Ionescu Fellowship ward round for this generous visit with Professor He fellowship enabling me to lead a team (Anaesthetist Dr A Elsissi, team leader from surgical and anaesthetic ODPs Mrs L Jones & Mrs B Sursham, and
another surgical colleague, Mr Rathinam) to go to China to observe, practise and learn the nuances of this approach. During our intensive immersion visit (with not much time to recover from jetlag after a 12 hr flight), Professor He and his anaesthetic team had organised daily lectures on the surgical and anaesthetic aspects of this approach so we all could gain a better understanding of the principles and potential application of it. We also had the opportunity to spend a lot of time in operating theatres every day so that everyone could gain a firsthand practical knowledge of the skills and techniques. While there are a lot of “how to do� videos on the internet, they cannot provide the opportunity this visit offered to interact with experts and understand the
