Me/cfs and anaesthesia patient resource

I served as the clinical lead of a multidisciplinary stakeholder group for the Royal College of Anaesthetists (RCoA) to develop a patient resource for ME/CFS patients about to undergo surgery. This group included representation from the ME Association and the 25%ME Group. The project ran through 2023 utilising for the first time Lived Experience of ME sufferers who had experienced surgery. They partook in a focus group meeting, which generated themes for the resource, and their feedback was sought for the draft resource. The patient resource was launched at an Anaesthesia Annual Conference at the Royal College in February 2024 when I delivered a lecture on the topic. At the same time, a Royal College podcast we recorded, which involved a discussion about the resource between me and other stakeholders, was released. The resource was published in updated form on the Royal College website in June 2024 and can be downloaded here. Feedback in the UK and abroad has been extremely positive. It has been fantastic to make a contribution to this group of patients who suffer so much, and with whom I work regularly in the functional medicine context to attempt to improve their function with often surprising outcomes.
The next phase of this work is to provide education to anaesthetists and other clinicians, and to this end I am currently working on a manuscript with co-authors to be published in the BJA Education journal, which is provided to all members of the RCoA and is the principle educational update journal for the speciality in the UK and is used by all specialty trainee doctors in preparing for the Royal College examinations. Lack of educational resources for doctors was common feedback from patients and other groups following the patient resource launch, so this will close that gap and will be published in 2026.